Aims

To support the free and open dissemination of research findings and information on alcoholism and alcohol-related problems. To encourage open access to peer-reviewed articles free for all to view.

For full versions of posted research articles readers are encouraged to email requests for "electronic reprints" (text file, PDF files, FAX copies) to the corresponding or lead author, who is highlighted in the posting.

___________________________________________

Monday, May 6, 2013

Should we train alcohol-dependent patients to avoid alcohol? Commentary on Spruyt et al “On the predictive validity of automatically activated approach/avoidance tendencies in abstaining alcohol-dependent patients”


Spruyt et al. [1] report an interesting study in which they compared an alcohol approach-bias, as measured with the Relevant-feature Stimulus Response Compatibility task (R-SRC) in 40 abstaining alcohol-dependent patients and 40 non-dependent controls. While controls had an approach-bias for alcohol as compared to matched control-pictures like water, alcohol-dependent patients showed a relative avoidance bias for alcohol. In the patients group, an avoidance-bias was associated with an increased risk for relapse 3 months later. The authors discuss the relationship of these findings with our training-results, in which alcohol-dependent patients trained to avoid alcohol did better at a one-year follow-up: “Although initial findings suggest that alcohol-avoidance training could help reduce relapse rates in abstaining-alcohol dependent patients [2], it is still unclear whether changes in automatically approach/avoidance tendencies are directly responsible for the observed changes in treatment outcome. Our findings suggest that actually inducing an avoidance orientation towards alcohol might have harmful effects, at least in a clinical population.”    > > > >   Read More