Screening and Brief Intervention is aimed at identification of 'at- risk' pattern of alcohol use and offering intervention. It identifies and helps persons who may be drinking in a risky pattern. It involves the use of a validated set of screening questions to identify person’s drinking pattern followed by a short conversation with those who are drinking in a risky pattern and a referral to specialized treatment, if warranted.

The CAGE questions are four simple and easy-to-remember to screen for alcohol use problems. The questions are designed to be less obtrusive than directly asking someone if they have a problem with alcohol. The scale can be administered in less than one minute.

The AUDIT is a screening tool that is used to identify persons with hazardous and harmful patterns of alcohol consumption.

The AUDIT was developed as a simple method of screening for excessive drinking and to assist in brief assessment. It can help identify excessive drinking as the cause of the presenting illness. It provides a framework for intervention to help risky drinkers reduce or cease alcohol consumption and thereby avoid the harmful consequences of their drinking. The AUDIT also helps to identify alcohol dependence and some specific consequences of harmful drinking.

You can read more about AUDIT here.

The Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST) was developed for the World Health Organization (WHO) by an international group of researchers and clinicians as a technical tool to assist with early identification of substance use related health risks and substance use disorders in primary health care, general medical care and other settings.

The WHO ASSIST project aims to support and promote screening and brief interventions for psychoactive substance use by health professionals to facilitate prevention, early recognition and management of substance use disorders in health care systems with the ultimate goal of reducing the disease burden attributable to psychoactive substance use worldwide.The ASSIST package is part of the WHO ASSIST project and was developed to help the primary health professionals to detect and manage substance use and related problems in primary and general medical care settings.

You can access ASSIST here.

The World Health Organization describes brief interventions as those aimed at identifying current or potential problems associated with substance use and motivate those at risk to change their substance use behavior.

Brief interventions can be brief, such as delivered in a single session, or extended with multiple components or designed to be used multiple times. These are generally short-term counseling interventions.

Brief interventions are a useful component of a full spectrum of treatment options. These are particularly valuable when more extensive treatments are unavailable or a person is resistant to such treatment.

A related term is screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT), which refers to screening brief intervention and referral to treatment.

Some of the common components of brief intervention are represented by the acronym FRAMES.

You can read more about AUDIT- linked Brief Intervention (BI) here.

• The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). Guidelines for Use in Primary Care. Second Edition. WHO/MSD/MSB/01.6a
• https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/audit-the-alcohol-use-disorders-identification-test-guidelines-for-use-in-primary-health-care
• Ewing, J.A. (1984). Detecting alcoholism: The CAGE questionnaire. JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, 252, 1905–1907.
• https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/978924159938-2
• https://www.who.int/substance_abuse/activities/sbi/en/