Therapists' perceptions of the link between stress and the urge to drink among alcoholics.

The present study examined the ability of therapists who have clinical experience in treating alcoholism to perceive the specific way alcoholics function cognitively when confronted with potentially stressful events and to conceive of the link between stress and the urge to drink in an alcoholic population. The methodological framework used was an application of Anderson's functional theory of cognition (FTC) [Anderson, N. H. (1996). A functional theory of cognition. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum]. The total sample was composed of 226 participants (76 therapists and 150 alcoholic inpatients). The results revealed that therapists were (a) highly capable of assessing the cognitive processes of patients, both their judgments of stress and urge to drink and (b) well aware of the particular relationship between stress and alcohol that characterizes the alcoholic population. However, the results also indicated a propensity on the part of therapists to overestimate the extent of the urge to drink generated by different situations. Despite several limitations, this study is one of the first to demonstrate therapists' understanding of the cognitive functioning of alcoholic patients.