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A doctor in the US has been awarded the 2007 Dan Anderson Research Award for his study on the benefits of couples therapy in treating female alcoholics.

William Fals-Stewart, professor at the University of Rochester School of Nursing, was recognised by the Butler Center for Research at the Hazelden Foundation, for having advanced the scientific knowledge of addiction recovery.

Medical News Today explains that Professor Fals-Stewart's study is the first to focus exclusively on the efficacy of behavioural couples therapy for alcoholic women, and it's the first to show greater reductions in partner violence among alcoholic women who received behavior couples therapy compared with other treatments.

The study, Learning Sobriety Together: A Randomized Clinical Trial Examining Behavioral Couples Therapy With Alcoholic Female Patients, published in 2006 in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, found that behavioural couples therapy plus individual alcoholism counselling was significantly more effective in terms of improving outcomes than two other treatments - individual-based treatment only and psychoeducational attention control treatment.

After one year, female patients who received behavioural couples therapy reported significantly fewer days of drinking and higher rates of relationship satisfaction than patients in the other two groups.

Professor Fals-Stewart explained: "We've known that whenever you involve family members in alcoholism treatment, we get better outcomes."

"But the majority of research has been done on male alcoholics and non-substance-abusing wives or partners. It's pretty common for women to stay with substance-abusing men. But it's much more common for men to leave relationships with alcoholic women.

"Because women report that relationship issues are enormously important to them, it makes good sense to study the effects of couples therapy on female alcoholics. There's been a gaping hole in research on alcoholic women. Our study helps fill this void."

Article published on 16/01/2008 by DryOutNow.com

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