Treatment effectiveness as judged by successfully and unsuccessfully treated alcoholics

Thirty-seven successfully and 46 unsuccessfully treated male alcoholics were asked to judge the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of six treatment methods routinely offered by a state hospital. For each treatment method, the total frequencies of judgments of most and least helpful, respectively, were as follows: detoxification (16%, 14%), lectures (16%, 20%), group therapy (54%, 7%), individual counseling (26%, 6%), work therapy (17%, 22%) and family therapy (13%, 14%). The two groups of subjects differed significantly in the frequencies of treatment methods judged to be "least helpful", but not in the frequencies of "most helpful" treatment. The similarity between the judgments of successfully and unsuccessfully treated alcoholics might reflect the positive effects of previous treatment in the unsuccessful group.