The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse will be adopting an alcohol counseling program in the fall designed to help students in need help themselves.
Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students is a counseling program aimed to help students who have issues with alcohol by allowing them to “offer their own behavior change,” according to Matt Vogel, community health specialist at UW-La Crosse.
BASICS is very different than any other alcohol counseling programs because instead of telling students not to drink, BASICS is designed for counselors to open channels for communication so the students can make their own decisions about drinking.
“You are meeting them where they are,” Vogel said. “Essentially, you are working with them for them to make their own behavior change, and they choose to make that behavior change.”
The program will involve two counseling sessions in which the student and counselor discuss the student’s behaviors and attitudes toward alcohol and work together to correct them.
“We have had enough of the finger wagging and the thou-shall-not attitude,” Vogel said. “Yes, they have an alcohol policy violation but they are still human beings and should be respected and compassionately talked to.”
The BASICS program is available to all students at UW-La Crosse who feel they need help with drinking problems, but Vogel said it is generally used with students who have received drinking violations. Vogel said research shows that the program produces positive outcomes for the students who participate.
“When someone internally wants to make a change and verbalizes that, research has shown that that change is much more likely to be implemented in their life,” Vogel said.
The hope is that if students go through the program and change their attitudes, behaviors and knowledge about alcohol use, that change may be able to spread to their peer groups, Vogel said.
The program uses a “harm reduction approach” so students will feel comfortable coming to the program without risking getting in trouble.
According Alex Faris, psychologist for University Health Services, UW-Madison does not provide the BASICS program to its students, but there are many similarities between the program and the alcohol counseling services in place at UW-Madison. The counseling services provided by UHS also offer a risk reduction approach.
“It is a harm reduction approach,” Faris said. “We realize that a lot of students are going to drink and so we eliminate obstacles by offering a risk-free approach (to counseling services).”
The Offices of the Dean of Students works in collaboration with UHS to offer the Values and Influences Toward Alcohol program, which is a group counseling session offered to students who need it a couple times throughout a semester, Faris said. The program is for students who have received alcohol policy violations and are required by ODOS to complete counseling.
BASICS will be free to students who willingly seek to participate in the program, but Vogel said there will be a fee for students who are required to get counseling for an alcohol violation.
