Psychological Distress, Self-efficacy and Abstinence of Alcohol Dependents after Inpatient Treatment

Question: Is there a relationship between psychological distress, self-efficacy and abstinence of inpatients treated for alcohol dependence? Method: Naturalistic field study, in which differences in patient characteristics between abstinent (N = 537) and relapsed patients (N = 410) at the one-year-follow-up were analyzed using logistic regression and Chi square tests. Results: Patients with low psychological distress at the beginning of treatment showed an abstinence rate of 71 % at one-year follow up. Of patients with high scores in alcohol-related self-efficacy at the end of treatment 76 % were continuously abstinent at the one-year-follow-up, and 80 % of patients that had undergone less than 2 detoxifications. Reduction in psychological distress was not related to treatment outcome. Conclusions: Self-efficacy is more important in abstaining than the well-known prognostic variables work, partner, and age. The high prognostic value of self-efficacy in combination with previous detoxifications may be an indication for the importance of addiction-related interventions in the treatment of alcohol dependence