Personality-targeted interventions delay growth of binge drinking in adolescence
NOVEMBER 16, 2007
Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry have had a paper entitled: 'Personality-targeted interventions delay the growth of adolescent drinking and binge drinking' published online in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. This is part of an on-going research study, that is supported by Action on Addiction.
Dr Patricia Conrod, Ms Natalie Castellanos and Dr Clare Mackie's research demonstrates that a personality-targeted intervention that Dr Conrod developed has revealed robust intervention effects in the prevention of adolescent alcohol use.
Findings showed that in adolescents aged between 14 and 15 years, the growth in the quantity and frequency of alcohol use was delayed by 6 months.
The interventions were particularly effective in preventing the growth of binge drinking in those students with a sensation seeking personality. Sensation seeking students, who reported drinking alcohol at baseline, were 45% less likely to binge drink at 6 month follow up and 50% less likely to binge drink at 12 month follow up compared to those students with a sensation seeking personality who did not receive the intervention.
The research team believes that the advantage of this new intervention approach is that it targets precursors to alcohol misuse, rather than the problem behavior, and thus has greater potential for prevention relative to other brief interventions.
Please refer to the journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry to read the paper in full.