Substance abuse refers to the harmful or hazardous use of psychoactive substances, including alcohol and illicit drugs. Psychoactive substance use can lead to dependence syndrome – a cluster of behavioral, cognitive, and physiological phenomena that develop after repeated substance use. Substance abuse is a chronic disease; people simply cannot stop using drugs for a few days and be cured. Most patients need long-term or repeated care to stop using and get back to normal functioning, whether they succeed in that depends on their level of motivation and the way they weigh the pros and cons of substance abuse. The present study entitled “Decisional Balance and Treatment Motivation among Substance Abusers in Rehabilitation centers” was aimed to understand the relation between decisional balance and treatment motivation. The objectives of the study were to assess the Decisional Balance and Treatment Motivation among substance abusers in rehabilitation centers, to examine the relationship between Decisional Balance and Treatment Motivation among substance abusers in rehabilitation centers and to study the difference in Decisional Balance and Treatment Motivation among substance abusers with respect to domicile. The study was conducted on a sample of 100 patients aged 15 – 64 years old of Kashmir valley. The data was collected from two main hospitals of Kashmir namely Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital (SMHS) and Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Kashmir (IMHANS-K) using Decisional Balance Scale (DBS) by Janis and Mann (1977) and Treatment Motivation Questionnaire (TMQ) by Ryan, Plant and O‟Mally (1995). The data was put to various statistical measures by using Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) version 20.0. The collected data was analyzed by various statistical techniques like descriptive statistics, co-relational analysis and comparative analysis. The results of co-relational analysis revealed that there is a significant positive correlation between Decisional Balance and Treatment Motivation. The comparative analysis revealed that there is no significant difference in Decisional Balance and Treatment Motivation with respect to domicile. \ INTRODUCTION The increasing production, distribution, promotion and easy availability of substance together with the changing values of society has resulted in rising substance abuse related problems emerging as a major public health concern in India. Sociologist, social worker, psychiatrists, other mental health professionals, educators, and politicians are ever more identifying substance use and abuse as a critical public health problem. Substance abuse refers to the harmful or hazardous use of psychoactive substance (those drugs that affect mental functioning) including alcohol and illicit drug (WHO, 2011). The first key factor in reducing the substance abuse among the abusers is motivation. Motivation has been accorded as a central place in many theoretical approaches to addiction (Kopetz, Lejuez, Wiers, &Kruglanski, 2013). Motivation is an important and first step towards any action or change in behavior (Diclemente, Bellino&Neavins, 1999). Research studies have highlighted that motivation appears to be a critical dimension in influencing substance abusers to seek, comply with and complete treatment as well as to make successful long-term changes in their abusing behavior (Diclemente& Scott, 1997). Self-Determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) provides a theoretical frame work for understanding internal as external factors of motivation and also checks the influences of type of motivational factors on treatment outcomes. The organism integration theory (OIT), is an important aspect of
