Mindful Continuing Education

1. Many early treatment approaches for couple therapy to treat Alcohol Use Disorders (AUDs) hypothesized that marriage to a man with an AUD represented a neurotic resolution of psychological conflicts by their wives, and that therapy, therefore, should focus on the woman's own psychological issues.

2. Alcohol-focused Behavioral Couple Therapy (ABCT) is a cognitive-behavioral treatment model based on the assumption that multiple factors maintain the identified patient's (IP's) drinking, including variables that are individual, familial, social/environmental, and:

3. The ABCT model assumes that internal factors such as expectations, attitudes, values, life experiences and perceptions of reality mediate the association between external antecedents and drinking behavior.

4. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) interventions focus on enhancing significant other (SO) skills, which may include each of the following EXCEPT:

5. Although ABCT is designed to include both partners in all treatment sessions, recent research suggests that providing a combination of ABCT and individual CBT tended to yield better treatment attendance and comparable treatment outcomes.

6. ABCT has been shown to positively impact the desired outcomes of reducing IP drinking and:

7. While more men suffer from AUDs than women, the consequences of problematic drinking behaviors disproportionately affect women, such that women are more likely to die as a result of their drinking and are more likely to have severe medical problems as a result of their drinking.

8. Active ingredients are the specific elements of a treatment that account for positive results, and moderators are client processes impacted by the active ingredients, which lead to desired behavior change.

9. Research suggests that ABCT may be more efficacious for drinkers with less severe alcohol dependence than for those with more severe dependence.

10. Specific active therapist ingredients/interventions that have been proposed for ABCT include relationship enhancement, drinker skills training, partner skills training, and:

11. Studies have demonstrated that there may be a temporal relation between alcohol use and relationship satisfaction in which relationship satisfaction gains occur before improvements in alcohol use or consequences of alcohol use, and such findings suggest that improved relationship functioning may facilitate improvements in drinking outcomes.

12. During ABCT, relationship change may occur through a number of pathways, including:

13. Which of the following is NOT one of the authors recommendations for future ABCT research efficacy and effectiveness research?

14. Process research should further explore proposed active ingredients and mechanisms of change of ABCT, such as whether or not improvements in relationship functioning and alcohol use occur through motivational enhancement, IP or SO skills training, or a combination of those variables.