• Dorothy Newbury-Birch, Simon Coulton, Martin Bland, Paul Cassidy, Veronica Dale, Paolo Deluca, Eilish Gilvarry, Christine Godfrey, Nick Heather, Eileen Kaner, Ruth McGovern, Judy Myles, Adenekan Oyefeso, Steve Parrott, Robert Patton, Katherine Perryman, Tom Phillips, Jonathan Shepherd, and Colin Drummond.
• Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, Richardson Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 4AX, UK dorothy.newbury-birch@ncl.ac.uk.
• Alcohol Alcohol. 2014 Sep 1; 49 (5): 540-8.

AimTo evaluate the effectiveness of different brief intervention strategies at reducing hazardous or harmful drinking in the probation setting. Offender managers were randomized to three interventions, each of which built on the previous one: feedback on screening outcome and a client information leaflet control group, 5 min of structured brief advice and 20 min of brief lifestyle counselling.MethodsA pragmatic multicentre factorial cluster randomized controlled trial. The primary outcome was self-reported hazardous or harmful drinking status measured by Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) at 6 months (negative status was a score of <8). Secondary outcomes were AUDIT status at 12 months, experience of alcohol-related problems, health utility, service utilization, readiness to change and reduction in conviction rates.ResultsFollow-up rates were 68% at 6 months and 60% at 12 months. At both time points, there was no significant advantage of more intensive interventions compared with the control group in terms of AUDIT status. Those in the brief advice and brief lifestyle counselling intervention groups were statistically significantly less likely to reoffend (36 and 38%, respectively) than those in the client information leaflet group (50%) in the year following intervention.ConclusionBrief advice or brief lifestyle counselling provided no additional benefit in reducing hazardous or harmful drinking compared with feedback on screening outcome and a client information leaflet. The impact of more intensive brief intervention on reoffending warrants further research.© The Author 2014. Medical Council on Alcohol and Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

13 keywords...

hide…