A Rose by Any Other Name...

The title of this post comes from Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II, by Shakespeare. Although this Shakespearian tragedy has little to do with drinking and nothing to do with collegiate prevention strategies, it makes a point that AOD preventionists may wish to consider when plying their trade on campus.

Few involved in addressing high-risk and dangerous drinking on college campuses are unaware of BASICS, Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students. This is an evidence-based, highly effective strategy for addressing high-risk drinking behaviors with students. Its use enables practitioners to motivate students to make changes in their alcohol use behaviors. That said, most of the students who are exposed to BASICS do so as either the result of a violation of an institution’s alcohol policies or are actually mandated to do so following a particularly untoward consequence of drinking, like hospitalization.

That BASICS exists, to use collegiate vernacular, is “awesome”; that it is primarily used after the fact of an alcohol violation or serious consequence of drinking suggests that it may not be utilized to its full potential. If students are exposed to BASCIS after the fact it is not so much a preventive strategy as a proactive clinical strategy. Do not get me wrong as I am not complaining about BASICS or its use; I was an early user of the practice in 2000 and have had the opportunity to discuss my experiences in its use with some of those who created BASICS and were involved in its rigorous vetting. My point is, perhaps there are ways to expand the approach beyond its current use as a proactive intervention and transform it into an effective intercession with students before untoward consequences of their drinking occur. NOTE: To read more on the difference between an “intervention” and an “intercession” read my article in the June 2016, Vol. 2, Issue 1 edition of The Addiction Educator – pp. 4 – 6: http://www.incase.org/attachments/AE-Vol2.pdf ).

Involving students before they violate institutional policy or find themselves in a situation where they are mandated to complete a BASICS program necessitates students making self-referrals to the program. Although self-referrals can result when individuals find themselves between the proverbial rock and a hard place, most often these referrals happen when there is an equilibrium between student curiosity about a particular behavior and their apprehensions about the process in which they would involve themselves in order to learn more. To that end, the term “BASICS,” when the acronym is spelled out in campus advertising, includes terms that, to be blunt, are off-putting…Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students. Terms such as “screening” and “intervention” are likely red flags for many college students and likely deter self-referrals for many students.

Nancy Reynolds of Ithaca College raised this point in a recent discussion on the BASICS Listserv. She suggested that on her campus, students were “scared off” by such “researchy-clinical terms” when a traditional interpretation of the BASICS acronym was proffered. What she reported doing at Ithaca College is to reinterpret the acronym making BASICS, Balancing Alcohol and Substances to Improve College Success.

Nancy’s suggestion strikes me as not only logical, it is genius in its simplicity as well as sensitivity to how students think. By simply attending to the role language plays in affecting how a program is perceived can likely increase student self-referrals. Students are much more likely to view an intercession as preferable to an intervention, especially in an age when the meaning of “intervention” in cases involving alcohol and other drug use has been determined by cable shows such as A & E’s Intervention and Celebrity Rehab.

Returning to Shakespeare, I wonder if he was not a closet AOD preventionist? We know that “traditional BASICS” works – see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499225/. If interpreting the acronym for students in such a way as to increase the likelihood that they will engage in self-referral, then I would suggest that indeed, “a rose by any other name DOES smell as sweet.”

What do you think?

Dr. Robert