Integrating Motivational Interviewing and Brief Behavioral Activation Therapy: Theoretical and Practical Considerations

• MI may be used to increase motivation to enter into and adhere to BADT.
• The integration of MI and BATD has the potential to improve clinical outcomes
• In many instances, MI adds an adjunctive approach to the goals of BADT.

Behavioral Activation and specifically the Brief Behavioral Activation Therapy for Depression (BATD) has a strong record of empirical support but its focus on practical out-of-session activation-based assignments can lead to poor levels of adherence if efforts to enhance motivation are not prioritized. Towards this end, this paper describes the assimilative integration of Motivational Interviewing (MI) and BATD to improve clinical outcomes by integrating MI’s focus on building and maintaining motivation to change into BATD. The paper provides an overview of MI and BATD, theoretical issue raised in integrating the two approaches, and examples of how this integration results in a nondirective and motivation-focused approach to conducting BATD.