Matching Therapy and Patients: The Cafeteria Plan*

Not all alcoholic patients can benefit from all treatment modalities. The “Cafeteria Plan” offers a sufficient variety of treatment approaches for any one patient to be able, with professional guidance, to select appropriate therapeutic modalities for himself. This paper describes a concept of comprehensive alcoholism services, and shows how these can be adapted to any clinic program and how patients can be assisted in selecting acceptable treatment plans. Clinics which have broadened their therapeutic program by adopting such a concept have found that they can offer treatment to larger numbers of patients and that attrition rates diminish.