In the News
PHI’s Sarah Zemore Discusses How People with Substance Use Disorder Can Benefit from Different Types of Support Groups
In Public Good News, Sarah Zemore, senior scientist at PHI’s Alcohol Research Group, shares findings from her recent study which revealed that people with alcohol use disorders who attended a mutual-help group experienced the same benefits for recovery, regardless of the group they chose.
- Public Good News
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Focus Areas
Alcohol, Tobacco, Drugs & Mental Health, Healthy Communities -
Issues
Alcohol -
Expertise
Research – Surveillance -
Programs
Alcohol Research Group
“The ways public health collectively treats, talks about, and understands addiction and substance use disorders is changing.
This is, in part, thanks to people in recovery, mental health advocates, and groundbreaking science. They show us that addiction is multilayered and complex and that there are many ways to treat it.
A new study published this summer looked at different types of support groups—including SMART Recovery, LifeRing Secular Recovery, Women for Sobriety, and the more well-known Alcoholics Anonymous—and found that people who have issues with alcohol and attend support groups see similar benefits in their recovery, no matter which type they choose.
To better understand what these findings mean for community health workers, Public Good News talked with Sarah Zemore, senior scientist at the Alcohol Research Group.
She shared more on the benefits of peer-led and mutual-help groups and why more options are a good thing.
Here’s what she said.
[Editor’s note: The contents of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.]
Public Good News: Can you tell us more about your study’s findings? What should community health workers know?
Sarah Zemore: The findings are pretty clear that we can refer people to a range of empirically supported mutual help groups. Not only 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, but also these second-wave mutual help groups that we’ve studied: Women for Sobriety, LifeRing, and SMART Recovery.
The bottom line is that all of these groups are highly effective. We found that there was a highly significant relationship between greater mutual-help group involvement and better alcohol outcomes, regardless of which mutual-help group you attended. Whether it was 12-Step only, WFS only, LifeRing only, SMART only, or a mix of groups, right? If you were involved, you did well, and those were impressive effect sizes.Sarah Zemore, PhD
Senior Scientist, Alcohol Research Group, Public Health Institute
Alternatives to Alcoholics Anonymous are Just as Effective for People with Alcohol Use Disorders
A study from the Alcohol Research Group, a program of the Public Health Institute, was released and found that people with alcohol use disorders who attended a mutual-help group experienced the same benefits for recovery regardless of the group they chose.
Click on the link below to read the full article.
Originally published by Public Good News
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