Prof Stephen Rollnick
Professor Stephen Rollnick is best known as a co-founder of Motivational Interviewing.
Biography
Professor Stephen Rollnick is best known as a co-founder of Motivational Interviewing. He is a Clinical Psychologist with many years of experience in service provision and in training of practitioners and an Honorary Distinguished Professor in the School of Medicine in Cardiff University, Wales, UK with a research record focused on good practice in efforts to promote change and behaviour change among patients, clients and the practitioners who serve them. His early experience as a trainee nurse in a hospital addiction treatment setting led to an interest in constructive methods for helping people resolve difficult behaviour change problems. This has taken him through a close collaboration with Professor William R Miller on the subject of motivational interviewing, a Doctoral thesis (1993) on counselling for excessive drinkers, to more recent work on consultations about lifestyle and medication use in healthcare practice. Stephen Rollnick developed many fundamental concepts of motivational interviewing with William R Miller in their 1991 book: Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change that had two revised editions since its first publication. Rollnick used his experience in the field of addiction treatment to find ways in which healthcare professionals could combat ambivalence regarding change. The technique has since been adopted by many healthcare professionals in their practice. His work has included support to programmes for pregnant teens, children with HIV-AIDS in Africa and medication adherence in different areas including the development and evaluation of methods for helping undergraduates and qualified practitioners change their communication and consulting behaviour. He is a co-founder of PATA (Paediatric Aids Treatment for Africa) and the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT), an international network for trainers.