What is Motivational Interviewing for Mental Health?

Summary: Motivational interviewing for mental health is a therapeutic technique designed to help patients identify and establish their reasons for engaging in mental health treatment and help them overcome internal obstacles to creating behavioral change.

Key Points:

• Motivational interviewing (MI) prioritizes a positive therapeutic alliance between patient and therapist.
• During MI, therapists reserve judgment and recognize that each patient has agency and can drive the treatment process.
• MI therapists prioritize creating an atmosphere of empathy, compassion, and understanding that helps patients speak openly and honestly.
• During an MI session, the therapist focuses on helping each patient articulate their own reasons for creating positive change in their life.

What Is Motivational Interviewing for Mental Health and How Is It Used?

Motivational interviewing is a treatment modality that focuses on helping you recognize there’s a difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future. While this is true for other types of therapy and counseling, MI includes specific components related to motivation and change that make it unique among treatment approaches. In most cases, therapists use MI sessions to support other components of a treatment plan.

Core components of MI include:

1. Genuine Personal Connection.

An MI session is neither strict nor formal. An MI therapist keeps the mood safe and agreeable. They get to know you and establish an authentic rapport, which encourages you to feel comfortable talking about deeply personal issues. By forming this kind of connection, which enhances your willingness to learn and share, they get a better understanding of you as a person. Their focus on you – rather than the symptoms of your mental health disorder, is instrumental in building the kind of mutual trust and understanding helps you learn, grow, and thrive in recovery.

2. Proactive and Positive.

Some forms of therapy can be difficult to navigate because they revolve around the most serious topics in your life, which is to be expected. However, spending all your time in the heavy can get exhausting. Motivational interviewing can enhance your treatment plan by prioritizing  the positive elements of the recovery process. In an MI session, your therapist focuses on and encourages you to cultivate your strengths. This can help inspire and prepare you to meet challenging days with optimism and hope for the future.

3. Patient Centered.

Treatment modalities such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) are ideal for helping you develop new coping methods to process emotion and manage stress and distress. But that’s not the only way to go about your recovery. With motivational interviewing, you and your therapist focus on unearthing and shining a light on parts of you that don’t need changing but instead can help you grow. In this way, MI helps teach you that you already have most of what you need to succeed. In this way, MI pairs well with other modalities by reminding you of your inherent strength and ability, and can give you the confidence to apply the skills you learn from approaches like CBT and DBT.

What Are the Benefits of Motivational Interviewing?

Benefits of motivational interviewing include:

1, Self-Confidence

Since motivational interviewing is about fostering positive qualities about yourself, one outcome is increased self-confidence and enhanced self-esteem. During treatment, it can be easy to get lost in your challenge areas and forget about your positive qualities. Motivational interviewing can help you rediscover your value and remember that a full, fulfilling, and healthy life is within reach.

2. The Real You

During an MI session, the MI therapist creates an environment that allows you to feel safe to be yourself. They’ll ask questions to get to know who you are and help you learn more about yourself. It’s a time when you can have fun with being who you truly are, without worrying about what anyone else thinks or has to say about it.

3. Hope and Optimism

During treatment, you may have days when the weight of it all seems to be too much, and you question everything – your treatment plan, your ability to meet your goals, and whole point of being in treatment. Motivational interviewing helps you stay connected to your hope, confidence, and optimism, especially on tough days. It helps remind you that, even though you experience challenges, you can overcome them because you know how strong and resilient you are.

What Makes Motivational Interviewing for Mental Health Different Than Other Modalities

In most cases, MI is an approach that supports or augments other approaches. In most cases, therapy involves a therapist helping a patient by offering, teaching, or exposing them to new knowledge and facilitating the development of new skills that originate with the therapist. While many components of MI resemble the most common forms of therapy, such as open honest communication and a positive treatment alliance, the purpose of an MI session is not to provide new knowledge but rather to guide the patient to things inside themselves.

To paraphrase the publication we link to in the first sentence of this article:

MI therapists do not make change happen. Patients have their own motivations, strengths, and resources that MI therapists help activate. Motivation for change comes from within the patient and is not given to them.

In that way, motivational interviewing can help patients take ownership of their treatment and find their own reasons for being in treatment, which is essential to their treatment success.