An integrative review of personalized feedback interventions for pain and alcohol

Interrelations between pain and alcohol consumption are considered to be bidirectional in nature, leading to greater pain and increased drinking over time. Personalized feedback interventions (PFIs), which typically aim to motivate behavior change via presentation of personalized and normative feedback, hold great promise for integrated treatment. There has been no previous review of PFIs for pain, and limited work has focused on examining the utility of PFIs for more established, adult drinkers. Our review of the literature revealed that brief, computer-based PFIs can improve pain outcomes and decrease problematic alcohol consumption. Future research would likely benefit from developing integrated, computer-based PFIs for pain and alcohol misuse. Such approaches offer potential for broad impact, while simultaneously reducing patient and healthcare provider burden.