Assessing Craving for Alcohol

[cv1]

This is a link to an in-depth publication from the US NIH group. I'm posting a lead-in and a link to the entire pub for your use.

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publicatio...-3/179-186.pdf

Assessing Craving for Alcohol

David J. Drobes, Ph.D., and Suzanne E. Thomas, Ph.D.

Craving for alcohol is common among alcohol-dependent people. Accordingly, measures to assess craving can play important roles in alcohol research as well as in alcoholism treatment. When developing or employing craving-assessment instruments, researchers and clinicians must consider numerous factors, such as the specific characteristics of craving to be evaluated, the instrument’s psychometric properties, and the timeframe over which craving is assessed.
The measures most commonly used for assessing craving in clinical settings are single-item questionnaires, although several multi-item questionnaires also have been developed.
Behavioral measures (e.g., amount of alcohol consumption or performance on cognitive tests) and psychophysiological measures (e.g., changes in salivation, respiration, or heart rate) are being used primarily in research settings. The assessment of craving can have numerous clinical
benefits, such as helping the clinician to evaluate the severity of a patient’s alcohol dependence, to select appropriate treatment approaches, and to monitor changes throughout a patient’s
treatment. The role of craving assessment in predicting treatment outcome, however, remains controversial.

KEY WORDS: AOD (alcohol and other drug) craving; assessment of variables and methods; specific AODU (alcohol and other drug use) measurement and test; AOD use behavior;
psychophysiology; alcohol cue; temporal context; patient assessment; patient-treatment matching; disease severity; patient monitoring; self report; questionnaire; literature review