Motivational Interviewing: A Practical Approach to Behavior Change - Essay Sample

Introduction

A motivational interview is a counseling approach that assists clients to resolve their ambivalent feelings and their insecurities through finding the motivation of that will help them change their behavior, the technique is much practical, with very short term effect on how difficult is to change a behavior (Jarussi, 2019). Motivational interviewing is used to address problems of addiction and any undesirable health behavior like diabetes, heart diseases, and asthma. The approach helps the client to be motivated to change the behaviors that are preventing them from making healthy choices in life.

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Motivational interviewing has been used and confirmed as the appropriate method and more collaborative talk that helps change behavior such as offending. It is an intervention that can be used among the individuals or ungroup, it builds a motivation that can be used as a program in the treatment offenders like substance abuse, driving offender, sex, and any other form of offense that is not healthy. It can be used with other intervention like the cognitive behavioral therapy to help change the behavior of a client, and motivational interview helps offenders to find the needed motivation that will help them change their behavior, it is more based on the substantial promise for the offender related acts change that can last and needs to be motivated before it is effective.

The motivational interviewing technique helps offenders by providing a clear means of working with the ambivalence and keeping the talk more focused, giving the client who is the offender the responsibility to change (Jarussi, 2019). It gives a direction on how to work with offenders who are feeling unmotivated or resistant to clients. The technique helps the professionals to minimize the exhaustion as a result of working with challenging clients it also provides a collaborative relationship between the professionals and the offenders making the resistant client change their behavior.

Motivational interviewing is most appropriate for those who have undergone community rejection or family rejection and the community pressure where most of them are at the correctional centers. The intervention has increased and improved the treatment and motivated offenders to reduce their undesirable behaviors.

Describe the components of motivational interviewing.

There are five main principles that the clinician must have in mind while using motivational interviewing, and they include: express empathy through reflective listening, develop discrepancy between client's goals and the current behaviors, avoid argument and confrontation, adjust to client resistance rather than opposing it directly, and lastly support self-efficacy and optimism.

Expressing empathy through a reflective listening, this means that the clinician can understand the client through reflective listening, it requires attention of different clients you attend to, the clinician should always respect and accept the feeling of their clients, clinician should be nonjudgmental and have a collaborative friendship with the client, listen more to the client and give the client more time to talk, the clinician should provide support through the recovery process of the client.

Developing discrepancy, I much necessary because it will help the client feel the change between their future and the current situation and have some hopes for the future. The main task of the clinician or professional is to help the client to realize how the current behaviors differ much from the desirable behavior that is acceptable (Jarussi, 2019). The professional to help the client know the negative personal or community consequences that contributed to their behavior problems.

Avoid argument and confrontation, professional may enter into an argument with a client who is not aware of the changes; however, still trying to convince the client will lead to more arguments always walk with the client through the treatment process.

Always roll with the client's resistance because resistance is predictive from the poor treatment of the client, and it lacks the therapeutic process. Resistance indicates that the client sees the situation differently, resistance will alert the professional to change the approach or listen more carefully to the client and needs more understanding of the client before any application of any approach towards the client. Resistance from the client allows the clinician to respond to the new issues that are coming out and take advantage of the situation without any confrontation with the client.

Support self-efficacy, most of the clients lack well-developed self-efficacy and finds it more difficult to maintain and change their behavior, it the responsibility of the clinician to support the client and help improve self-efficacy (Spohr et al., 2016). It will require the clinician first to identify the strengths of the client and use them to help find an appropriate treatment approach to the client. Self-efficacy is much important for the behavior change, and clinicians must believe in the clients their handling to meet their set goals. Discussing another treatment alternative that can be used is more important, and it can help even though they will be dropped or used in treatment for other problems like substance abuse, discuss with the client how other people in their similar situation managed to change their behavior successfully.

How would you use this technique when working with difficult inmates and offenders?

Being humble to the inmates and offenders, avoid being an expert when working with the inmates and offenders, and see the s equal partner in the process will make the process run smoothly and help the clients find the appropriate solutions to their behavior problems. Believing in the offenders and inmates will help change their behaviors, trust their efforts, and this will make a great change by reflecting the change talk with the client. Focusing on the current behaviors and unlearning the old habits of the clients will help most through asking questions and not depending so much on the part of the client, which might trigger some issues and cause harm to the client (Spohr et al., 2016). Slow down and not harry towards fixing the problems have enough time to with the client will help to understand the client very much, always listening to the client is good because it will allow you to come up with the appropriate approaches to help the client.

What other techniques could you use when working with difficult inmates and offenders?

Other techniques that I could use while handling inmates and offenders are cognitive behavioral therapy and community supervision. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a common talk therapy that is used by psychologists and counselors in a well-structured way in sessions to help clients with a negative thinking way to view situations more clearly and respond to them (Spohr et al., 2016). It can work alone or with other techniques to help treat mental disorders. Community supervision is another form of incarceration where the offenders and the inmates allowed to stay in the community for the support and rehabilitation process.

References

Spohr, S. A., Taxman, F. S., Rodriguez, M., & Walters, S. T. (2016). Motivational interviewing fidelity in a community corrections setting: Treatment initiation and subsequent drug use. Journal of substance abuse treatment, 65, 20-25.

Iarussi, M. M. (2019). Integrating Motivational Interviewing and Cognitive Behavior Therapy in Clinical Practice. Routledge.