Ten years of change in alcoholism treatment and delivery systems

The author reviews the major advances in concepts and methods that have been made in the treatment of alcoholism over the past decade but finds little change in the everyday operation of treatment programs. He examines the ideological differences between professionals and paraprofessionals in the field, the changes in treatment goals that have been made, the different types of alcoholic patients and their different needs and responses to treatment, the uses and misuses of drug therapies, the relatively unexamined values of psychotherapy, the recently successful behavioral therapies, and treatment delivery systems and their evaluation.