The relationship between assessment and alcohol treatment

Recently considerable attention has been paid to the matching hypothesis as an explanation of the failure to find a treatment of alcoholism that is generally beneficial. Clinicians, however, have long claimed that they match treatments to their patients' characteristics. The purpose of this study was to obtain descriptive data on the practice of patient-treatment matching in alcohol treatment programs. A survey questionnaire was sent to the directors of VA inpatient alcohol treatment programs across the United States. The questionnaire concerned program characteristics, treatment content, and patient-treatment matching practice. The results suggest that matching commonly occurs in the sample treatment programs, despite their typically structured format. Questions about the practice of patient-treatment matching that the findings raised are addressed.