How psychology beats alcohol misuse

Project
Adventure Trial

Purpose
To test a school-based mental health approach to preventing alcohol abuse

Funding
Action on Addiction commissioned the trial with the help of £250,000 raised through a charity trading day run by broker ICAP

Background
Around 5,000 teenagers in the UK are admitted to hospital each year for alcohol-related problems. Yet programmes that focus on the general dangers of drink and drugs appear to have limited success, according to Dr Patricia Conrod, senior lecturer at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry and associate professor at the University of Montreal. She devised an intervention designed to give young people the skills to avoid such self-destructive behaviour.

Action
A trial of the intervention involved 21 schools in London, which were randomly selected to either receive the programme or get the standard UK drug and alcohol education curriculum. More than 2,500 year 10 pupils were assessed and classed as being at high or low risk of developing future alcohol problems. High-risk pupils were divided into one of four “personality profiles”: anxiety, impulsivity, sensation seeking or hopelessness. Four staff in each of the 11 schools getting the intervention were trained to deliver group workshops tailored to these personality traits, with more than 700 pupils attending two sessions each.

Alcohol and drug problems were mentioned only in passing in the workshops, which focused instead on teaching young people how to make good decisions for themselves and ways of coping with negative thoughts, feelings of anxiety or controlling impulsivity and aggression.

“It works because it provides the tools particularly related to their personalities and personal struggles,” says Conrod.

A previous trial demonstrated the approach to be effective, but this study showed it could be delivered by school staff rather than professional psychologists, making it relatively inexpensive, says Conrod.

Outcome
The study – published in the journal, JAMA Psychiatry – found that after two years, “high risk” students in schools that ran the workshops were at a 29 per cent reduced risk of drinking, 43 per cent reduced risk of binge drinking and 29 per cent reduced risk of problem drinking compared with similar pupils in control schools. The intervention also delayed progression to more risky drinking behaviour such as frequent binge drinking.

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