Stages of Change

The Transtheoretical Model of Change or Stages of Change as it has become known in the substance abuse field, was developed by James O. Prochaska and Carlo C. DiClemente to describe the stages employed by an individual in making a behavior change. The stages in the model are: Precontemplation: this is the stage in which the person is generally unaware of the problem and has no intention of changing Contemplation: the person is aware of the problem and thinking about change but has not made a serious commitment to change. Preparation: the person may have made small inroads into the behavior change but has not reached a level of effective action. Action: the person modifies the behavior or experience or environment to overcome the behavior. Maintenance: the person focuses on relapse prevention and consolidation of the accomplishments of the action phase. To read more in the literature about this model, online databases ETOH, http://etoh.niaaa.nih.gov, PUBMED and PsychInfo provide a number of very useful citations. There are also a number of websites concerned with this model and topic, but many of them are redundant in that they mainly go over the five stages of change as listed above. The ones provided below do more than that, and offer a variety of different modes to learning about this model, from bibliography to articles, to a live web cast and more.