Principles of Motivational Interviewing in Community Development - Essay Example

How are the principles that underlie the process of motivational interviewing related to social change and community development? BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE DATE HERE How are the principles that underlie the process of motivational interviewing related to social change and community development? Introduction Motivational interviewing (MI) is an approach and philosophy employed to assist individuals in society to enhance their own intrinsic motivations with the ultimate goal of eliciting behavioural change (Lundahl and Burke 2009). It is an approach to effective communication between the interviewer (a clinical psychologist or social worker) that assists a client in altering maladaptive behaviours and alter thinking to come to more positive judgments and attitudes. Considered a client-centred approach, motivational interviewing involves illustrating to the client that the interviewer is attentive, empathetic and genuinely desires to be a facilitator of attitudinal and behavioural change to improve the socio-psychological adjustment of the client and improve their general lifestyle. Hence, the interviewer becomes, essentially, a positive change agent for the client (Miller, Yahne and Tonigan 2003). Individuals, within a social context, that have maladaptive or unhealthy behaviours detract from the development of a cohesive and well-functioning community. This is why enacting long-term behaviour change and improving socio-psychological adjustment is so critical, as deviant behaviours, anti-social attitude, or other negative behaviours can pose risk or danger to a broader community population. In an idealistic society, the goal is to ensure that all society members within a community have an attitude that promotes teamwork, alliance and partnership, though this is not a tangible reality in many societies throughout the world. This essay explores the processes of motivational interviewing and its potential benefits or contributions to achieving social change and developing positive communities with an emphasis on how MI is properly facilitated to achieve these desirable and encouraging advantages. Processes of motivational interviewing The main premise of MI is to maintain a non-adversarial attitude with the client, be completely without confrontational stance and illustrate complete non-judgmental behaviours (Miller and Rollnick 2002). The premise of MI is to break-down the barriers which are driving client uncertainty and ambivalence that allow for continuation of unhealthy or maladapted behaviours. In motivational interviewing, the mentor serves as a resource for assisting the client in resolving the factors that drive ambivalence without being directly persuasive. The interviewer serves only as a director that facilitates discussion about what is revealed within the client’s inner world and provides therapeutic discourse to nurture the client’s ability to choose healthier behaviours. Miller (2000) asserts strongly that love and compassion are the most potent triggers of behaviour change, therefore the role of the MI facilitator is to exemplify these interpersonal traits when building trust through discourse and relationship development to facilitate change within the client. Motivational interviewing has been widely successful in areas of curbing drug addiction (Patterson 2008), in the criminal justice system (Clark 2006), and even facilitating clients toward healthier eating and exercise (Burke, Arkowitz and Menchola 2003). In many domains, MI utilises strategies to improve client self-efficacy and promotes autonomy which gives the client a sense of empowerment to make changes and stay committed to these achieved behavioural evolutions to more positive attitude and behaviour. Hence, from a practice perspective, the MI facilitator must maintain very positive leadership talents, interpersonal skills, active listening traits, and maintain strong levels of emotional intelligence to facilitate intrinsic motivational change. The MI process is to alter both cognitive and behavioural aspects guiding an individual’s negative or otherwise maladjusted thinking patterns and strategies. Intrinsic motivations involve motivating an individual solely by the inherent pleasure and satisfaction that an individual experiences in a specific tasks or activity without reliance on rewards provided by the external social environment (Gkorezis and Panagiotis 2008). Such motivations might be the capability of achieving power and authority, celebrating personal achievement or even experiencing emotional harmony at the psychological level (Reiss 2002). Intrinsic motivations are more potent than extrinsic motivations as individuals are encouraged and inspired from within and will take action and manifest behaviours without having to be compensated and stimulated by others. Hence, there are implications that the ability of the MI facilitator to foster intrinsic change will have long-term benefits for the client. MI as a social change and community development facilitator Having provided a definition of the processes of motivation interviewing, it can now be illustrated how MI can positively promote social change and enhance positive community development. Social change is any effort to evolve the dynamics of what constitutes social order within an established society (Giddens 2006). Such change is mobilised through many different theoretical tactics, including creating positive discourse between all society members regardless of their demographics, by promoting social mentorship, improving academic curriculum to include thinking in diversity, or establishing organisations to reduce criminal behaviour in high-crime societies (to name only a few). Social change cannot be achieved without collaboration and unless society members embrace new normative value and belief systems which underpin new ways of thinking in culture, religion, economics and other relevant evolutionary ambitions. MI can be a facilitator for promoting social change as it alters the thinking and behaviour of an individual who is part of a broader community of diverse citizenry. Tseng, et al. (2002) describe an effective methodology of promoting social change as improving the social competencies of individuals and reducing harmful social disorders at the individual level. Hence, there are implications that motivational interviewing could be utilised as a tool by which to curb anti-social behaviours within a client. An individual maintaining anti-social tendencies or a diagnosed anti-social disorder have blatant disregard for the well-being of others in society. Prior and Paris (2005) strongly assert that using coercive methods (such as justice-related sanctioning) are not reliable or valuable for reducing anti-social behaviours and crimes against others as a result of maintaining this maladjusted type of thinking. Hence, prisons or other sanctioning legislations are ineffective in promoting more positive social attitude and behaviour, thereby allowing an individual to sustain anti-social behaviours over the long-term. Motivational interviewing, however, assist an individual in understanding the dynamics of what might cause maladjusted behaviours that create resentment or lack of empathy against others. By creating discourse to assist the individual come to grips with these beliefs and attitudes, it can potentially create a client that recognises the illogical aspects of what drives social malcontent, delivering an individual who will have more intrinsic motivation to work cooperatively with others and gain positive social belonging. Individuals with anti-social tendencies often hail from difficult backgrounds of abuse or parental maltreatment and have no experience with the fundamental joys of social belonging, love and compassion (Lock 2008). Through motivational interviewing, empathetic and compassionate behaviours are manifest by the facilitator with emphasis on building relationships and showing a sense of communal togetherness. Therefore, an individual who maintained resentful attitudes toward society have been, in the best case scenario, given a new perspective on social harmony and cohesiveness. Through the MI process, now society has a new contributing member that seeks collaboration rather than causing harm to others, evolving the prevalence of criminal behaviour on a one-by-one basis. This is why motivational interviewing is becoming best practice in prison systems, as it facilitates positive social change within the individual and, through positive interpersonal discourse, shows the maladjusted criminal a better method of coping with social resistance and achieving a more beneficial role in cohesive societies. MI is a type of developmental psychology that instructs an individual to reconsider negative thinking and transforms them to embrace such concepts as self-achievement and building of self-confidence that has monumental implications for how an individual contributes positively to the ideology of a unified society. The motivational interviewer should be providing the client with a sense of choice, illustrating that while resisting change is, indeed, the client’s right, the mentor is there to encourage change and point out the benefits of seeking a change strategy (Bundy 2004). Giving an individual a sense of personal ownership of their decision-making and a perception of autonomy is well-documented in sociological and psychological literature as being a positive motivator to avoid change resistance (Weiten and Lloyd 2010). The goal of the MI facilitator is to offer advice about how one can be more accepted in society and receive the approval of others if they prescribe to certain normative social ideologies that drive majority sentiment and values of a broader community population. Therefore, if the client openly embraces the advices of the MI facilitator, they are more likely to act on these advices and maintain life-long social learning and broader society now maintains a person that seeks inter-connectedness and is willing to be more flexible and content to adopt new normative social expectations when they inevitably evolve within a societal context. Well-respected psychological theorists throughout recent history have asserted that the achievement of social belonging is one of the most widespread, universal motivations for humans (Tay and Diener 2011). Motivational interviewing is also beneficial for community development, especially in reference to the theory of marginality and mattering proposed by Schlossberg (1989). Marginality is the perception that an individual does not fit in properly with other members of society whereas mattering is achievement of appropriate belonging. This theory of community development proposes that when a person feels they are cared for by others and maintain a prominent position in society, they are more likely to work toward building a positive community environment and support contributions to achieving community cohesion (Schlossberg). The basic premise of community development is the willingness of society members to come together to iron out solutions to social problems and effect positive change within a community context (Mathie and Cunningham 2010). Hence, the tangible ability (theoretically) of motivational interviewing to inspire collaboration and interpersonal belonging between different social actors (the client and the facilitator), sets the theoretical foundation for the type of marginalisation reduction that motivates more focus on illustrating behaviours that are acceptable and desirable to the established social norms in a community. There is more likelihood that an individual client exposed to the positive compassion, empathy and togetherness that underpins motivational interviewing will be more dedicated to working cooperatively with others to produce an effective community environment for all. In the 1950s, Kurt Lewin also promoted a community development theory known as Group Behaviour, proposing that an individual will be more diligent about producing a collective society if they feel they have been an active part of its construction (Burnes 2004). Hence, under this theoretical position, motivation interviewing underpins taking ownership of one’s own decisions, facilitating a positive sense of social ethics in the individual, and highlighting how one can benefit from prescription to various, established social norms. Over time and through positive, harmonious discourse between MI facilitator and the client, the individual can identify with the methods by which to become an active part of building a better community. This would be highly effective, once again, for one with anti-social behaviours that has rejected community and togetherness in exchange for retaliation against society members. Karl Marx argued that social change is hampered by continuing class struggles where elitists attempt to exploit or otherwise oppress the proletariat groups. This has been the foundation of many different uprisings throughout international history and has forbid the achievement of a cohesive and productive society. Through the MI process, the facilitator can point out that changing one’s social attitudes to prescribe to established norms and values can take one from a lower-status group to one that is embraced by the dominant in-group; in this case the group that manifests behaviours congruent with the dominant, guiding values and beliefs in a community. Illustrating that one might struggle less and achieve more prominent status could potentially promote a new type of intrinsic motivation for achievement and social status improvement. This would have numerous implications for facilitating development of one that wants to be an active part of solving community problems in a collective fashion. For instance, the MI facilitator may be able to help the client identify with difficult emotional responses related to lack of trust for others, resentment for past social experiences, or a plethora of other maladjusted thinking founded on difficult lifestyle. Through the interviewing process, the facilitator might offer advice that testing one’s resolve for working collaboratively (perhaps by volunteering with charity organisations) so as to expose the individual to the rewards achieved through community involvement and philanthropy. It would be an anticipation of such an advice-centred strategy that the person would find intrinsic rewards such as emotional fulfilment for helping others. Therefore, if the MI facilitator is capable of eliciting this type of change through advice about volunteerism, they have transformed the community by providing it with an individual motivated and capable of solving collaborative problems that affect everyone within a community. This theoretical perspective is congruent with Lewin’s Group Behaviour Theory and Schlossberg’s Marginality versus Mattering Theories which both emphasise social belonging and participation as being fundamental needs and motivations inspiring an individual to build a cohesive and less-problematic community. Conclusion Social change cannot and will not effectively occur if individuals in society are not flexible toward embracing new normative values and beliefs. Community development will not be achieved if there is not cooperation and social collaboration capable of solving community issues and problems; whatever the dynamics of these problems might be. Not all individuals in society are equipped with these inherent desires and some individuals, such as the anti-social personality, might have had difficult and strenuous social experiences that underpin considerable socio-psychological maladjustment. Therefore, these types of individuals are in need of methods to change attitudes and negative behaviours and explore new consequences that could be achieved by adopting a change-oriented methodology of thinking. This is why motivational interviewing maintains significant implications for promoting positive social change and for positive community development: the processes involve building close social relationships, establishing a sense of belonging in a social context, manifest love and empathy, and guide an individual toward more positive social thinking. Social change requires individuals that see a new vision for a community and are willing to take the steps necessary to achieve those goals, with a sense of teamwork and association necessary to realise these objectives. In a society, those with what society considers to be maladjusted thinking patterns pose a danger to social stability and complicate cohesion toward embracing a set of normative cultural and social patterns that drive how society interacts and achieves its long-term objectives toward harmony and prosperity. As shown by the research, motivational interviewing is effective in many different settings, ranging from criminal justice systems and from a psychotherapeutic perspective. In societies, those who seek harm against others in society continue to plague community citizens throughout the world and such behaviours might be capable of adjustment through a more humanistic approach to behaviour change that underpins the premise of motivational interviewing. There is a clear and definite relationship between the process of MI and community development and can theoretically prepare an individual for one that can embrace social change and wants to legitimately promote it for the sake of harmonious social living and togetherness. References Bundy, C. (2004). Changing behaviour: using motivational interviewing techniques, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 97(44), pp.43-47. Burke, B., Arkowitz, H. and Menchola, M. (2003). The efficacy of motivational interviewing: a meta-analysis of controlled clinical trials, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 71, pp.843-861. Burnes, B. (2004). Kurt Lewin and the planned approach to change: a re-appraisal, Journal of Management Studies, 41(6). Clark, M.D. (2006). Motivation interviewing for probation officers: tipping the balance toward change, Federal Probation, 7(1), pp.38-44. Giddens, A. (2006). Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gkorezis, P. and Panagiotis, E. (2008). 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