Roger Horbay of The Donwood Institute in Toronto writes with similar enthusiasm of the application of the Model to problem gambling. The Model was developed to help those people who do not seem ready to change, those who are often blamed for not being motivated or for being resistant to treatment. Prochaska and his colleagues gave therapists a framework of hope, in which those who are not ready to make active change are still seen as capable of making progress towards change. The Model overlooks the disagreements between different schools of psychotherapy as to why individuals have problems, and instead focuses on common elements in how people change. All change-oriented therapy, Prochaska and colleagues claim, uses two or more out of a selection of only 10 strategies of change, called the processes of change.
Successful changers use specific processes at specific stages of change.
The concept of stages of change helps counsellors to see clients, and individuals to see themselves, in terms of their readiness to change. Precontemplators are not willing to see the problem or do not think that they can change. In the contemplation stage, the changer seriously considers solving the problem. At this stage, the changer's task is to gather information and understanding about the problem behavior. A person in the preparation stage is usually planning to take action within the next month.