Ronda Dearing

• PhD
• Managing Director at BBEARG

Background It is widely accepted that the therapeutic alliance (TA) is a mediator of psychotherapy effects, but evidence is sparse that the TA is an actual mechanism of behavior change. The purpose of this study was to provide the first systematic evidence regarding the TA as a mechanism of change in the treatment of alcohol use disorder (AUD). Me...

Background: The current study aimed to contribute to the understanding of the session to session relationship between craving and drinking during the course of treatment via the incorporation into the analysis of both a) motivation to avoid alcohol and 2) pretreatment change, given that half of all individuals entering treatment change their drink...

Objective: With the growing recognition that, for some, significant changes in drinking occur before the first treatment session (i.e., pretreatment change), researchers have called for the careful assessment of when change occurs and its potential impact on mechanism of behavior change (MOBC) research. Using a commonly hypothesized MOBC variable,...

Identity change is related to reductions in alcohol use among treatment seekers, but it is unclear the extent to which identity change is associated with reductions in alcohol use among nontreatment seeking hazardous drinkers. The goal of the current study was to examine whether change in problem drinker identity (i.e., self-reported identification...

Objective: The therapeutic alliance is recognized as an important contributor to treatment outcomes. In this study, the session-to-session interplay of the alliance (as perceived by the patient) and alcohol involvement (drinking days and heavy drinking days between successive treatment sessions) was examined. The analyses also tested the extent to...

Although past research has demonstrated a positive relationship between the therapeutic alliance (TA) and improved drinking outcomes, specific aspects of the alliance have received less attention. In this study, we examined the association between alliance characteristics during treatment and 4-month follow-up drinking reports. Sixty-five treatment...

Objective: Using an iterative process, a series of three video scenarios were developed for use as a standardized measure for assessing women's perception of risks for alcohol-related sexual assault (SA). The videos included ambiguous and clear behavioral and environmental risk cues. Method: Focus group discussions with young, female heavy drink...

Background: Literature suggests that tobacco smoking among clients in alcohol treatment has important clinical implications, including poorer treatment outcome. Much of this literature, however, has been derived from research-based treatment samples that utilized stringent inclusion and exclusion criteria, limiting generalizability of findings. O...

Lesbian and bisexual (LB) women exhibit elevated rates of a variety of behaviors (i.e., smoking, excessive caloric intake, physical inactivity, heavy alcohol consumption) that put them at risk for adverse health consequences. Furthermore, LB women experience numerous barriers to obtaining culturally competent health care. In this article we review...

Do shame and guilt help people avoid doing wrong? Although some research suggests that guilt-proneness is a protective factor while shame-proneness puts individuals at risk, most research is either cross-sectional or short-term. In this longitudinal study, 380 5th graders (ages 10-12) completed measures of proneness to shame and guilt. We re-interv...

Objective: Heavy drinking, often defined as more than five drinks per occasion, is a major public health problem worldwide, yet most individuals who drink heavily never receive treatment. Focusing on those who receive treatment, numerous studies have found that alcohol use following treatment is discontinuous, with periods of abstinence alternatin...

Background: Major sporting events and other festive occasions are typically associated with alcohol consumption; however, little is known about risky drinking during events such as the "Super Bowl." Objectives: We sought to determine whether drinking on Super Bowl Sunday differed from Saturdays (the heaviest drinking day of the week) surrounding...

This study examined the interrelations among shame-proneness, guilt-proneness, internalized heterosexism (IH), and problematic substance use among 389 gay, lesbian, and bisexual men and women. Problematic alcohol and drug use were positively related to shame-proneness and negatively related to guilt-proneness. Bisexuals reported riskier substance u...

Research suggests that impulsivity is related to increased substance use and negatively associated with positive treatment outcomes. Research concerning impulsivity in alcohol treatment may be used to inform the development of prevention approaches. Impulsivity is a multi-dimensional construct and numerous impulsivity measures have been developed....

Gaining a better understanding of the natural course of hazardous alcohol consumption could inform the development of brief interventions to encourage self-change. In the current study, hazardous drinkers (based on Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test score) were recruited using advertisements to participate in a 2-year multiwave prospective s...

Introduction: Previous research has indicated that smoking behavior in the general population is linked to personality traits such as behavioral undercontrol and negative emotionality, but it is unknown whether these traits pertain to alcoholic smokers. Further, prior research has not established whether alcoholic smokers differ from their nonsmoki...

Delay discounting (DD) reflects the extent to which an individual devalues a reward based on its delay in time (i.e., preference for smaller immediate rewards relative to larger delayed rewards). DD has been consistently implicated as an important factor in the development, maintenance, and treatment of substance use disorders. Among individuals wi...

Shame is a common emotion that contributes to many problems that bring clients into therapy, such as poor psychological adjustment, interpersonal difficulties, and overall poor life functioning (see Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Not only is shame a factor underlying many of the reasons that clients seek psychotherapeutic help, but clients may feel sham...

Reviews the book, Developing resilience: A cognitive-behavioural approach by Michael Neenan (see record 2009-01292-000 ). The key concept underlying this book is that “people react differently to the same event based upon how they view it” (p. 2). Neenan proposes that when evaluating events, people often view the event as directly precipitating the...

This article examines the relationship of shame, guilt, and symptoms of alcohol dependence to pre-incarceration HIV risk behaviors in an ongoing study in a metropolitan jail. Between 2002 and 2004 an ethnically diverse sample of 368 male inmates (mean age = 31, SD = 9.7), were interviewed on a variety of constructs including shame- and guilt-pronen...

Heavy alcohol consumption (Testa & Parks, 1996) and childhood sexual abuse (CSA; Messman-Moore & Long, 2003) have been associated with adult sexual victimization. We examined the social behavior of 42 women under two alcohol conditions (high dose and low dose) in a bar laboratory. Women were videotaped interacting with a man they had just met. Wome...

Reviews the film, In My Country (2004) directed by John Boorman, based on the nonfiction book Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog (1998), and its depiction of the 1995 Truth and Reconciliation Hearings in South Africa. Its depiction of the hearings raises many important psychological questions concerning the resolution of trauma, including the rol...

This review explores gender differences in relapse and characteristics of relapse events in alcohol and substance use. For alcohol, relapse rates were similar across gender. Although negative mood, childhood sexual abuse, alcohol-related self-efficacy, and poorer coping strategies predicted alcohol relapse, gender did not moderate these effects. Ge...

Previous research has demonstrated that shame-proneness (the tendency to feel bad about the self) relates to a variety of life problems, whereas guilt-proneness (the tendency to feel bad about a specific behavior) is more likely to be adaptive. The current analyses sought to clarify the relations of shame-proneness and guilt-proneness to substance...

Psychologists are often called upon to provide supervision, mentorship, and training to graduate student therapists-in-training. In these roles, psychologists may influence whether graduate students enter personal therapy during their training. This study investigated variables (including perceived faculty attitudes about students in personal thera...

This investigation explored the relationship of client engagement variables (client expectations, therapeutic/working alliance, and session attendance) with treatment satisfaction and posttreatment drinking-related outcomes using data from 2 outpatient alcohol treatment studies (N = 208). Path analysis was used to test a model in which engagement v...

Examined gender differences in morality from a Freudian perspective. We summarized evidence from several literatures refuting Freud's notion that women have a weaker, less internalized sense of morality than men because of defects in the formation of the superego. Empirical studies (of children, adolescents, and adults), however, indicate that fema...

Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--George Mason University, 2001. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-99). Vita: leaf 100.