Motivational interviewing (MI) is an effective counselling method that enhances motivation through the resolution of ambivalence. 3 Relapse is considered an important stage in the change process and is used as an opportunity to learn about sustaining maintenance in the future. If successful, action leads to the final stage, maintenance, where the person works to maintain and sustain long term change. Successful progression through these stages leads to action, where the necessary steps to achieve change are undertaken. This change process is modelled in five parts as a progression from an initial precontemplative stage, where the individual is not considering change to a contemplative stage, where the individual is actively ambivalent about change to preparation, where the individual begins to plan and commit to change. The Prochaska and DiClemente Stages of Change model 2 offers a conceptual framework for understanding the incremental processes that people pass through as they change a particular behaviour. For example, the patient who presents with serious health problems as a result of heavy drinking, who shows genuine concern about the impact of alcohol on his health, and in spite of advice from his practitioner to cut back his drinking, continues to drink at harmful levels, embodies this phenomenon. Ambivalence is particularly evident in situations where there is conflict between an immediate reward and longer term adverse consequences (eg.
Ambivalence is a conflicted state where opposing attitudes or feelings coexist in an individual they are stuck between simultaneously wanting to change and not wanting to change. Their transtheoretical model of behaviour change (the 'Stages of Change') describes readiness to change as a dynamic process, in which the pros and cons of changing generates ambivalence. Prochaska and DiClemente 2 proposed readiness for change as a vital mediator of behavioural change. The Stages of Change model and motivational interviewing