Motivational Interviewing

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an approach to working with people and groups when the goal is to change a particular behavior. Often, the target behavior is related to healthy goals that may include quitting smoking, reducing drug and alcohol use, exercising, and eating nutritious foods, but MI has been adopted as a way of supporting behavior change across many disciplines, including education, social work, and criminal justice. Within MI, many concepts such as empathy, compassion, acceptance, partnership, and autonomy will sound familiar to most helping professionals who adhere to a client-centered approach, but one element of MI that makes it quite distinct from other approaches is its reliance on the evocation of a client’s own insights, desires, abilities, and needs. Although MI is considered to ...