Influences of criminal thinking on the relationship between psychosocial dysfunction and treatment motivation

Abstract

Research suggests that motivation for drug abuse treatment increases as psychological and social problems increase, but decreases as criminal thinking increases. Despite these two constructs having opposing influences on motivation, they are positively correlated such that high amounts of one are associated with high amounts of the other. The current study demonstrated these confounding relationships in a large data set including 7,623 men and women from 8 correctional-based treatment centers from two states. Although the hypothesis that criminal thinking would moderate the psychosocial dysfunction--treatment motivation relationship was not strongly supported, two revealing findings presented themselves. First, criminal thinking and psychosocial dysfunction differentially predict different stages of treatment motivation. Secondly, suppression effects reveal that most of the relationship between psychosocial dysfunction and criminal thinking is unrelated to treatment motivation, and thus their high correlation with each other and inverse relationships to motivation are less challenging. Implications for treatment are discussed.