Substance use & misuse
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Health professionals are among special populations in need of substance use/misuse prevention and treatment services. The behavior of impaired health professionals often have dire consequences to one's social, financial, and psychological life. This presentation will outline the epidemiology of substance use/misuse among health professionals, the consequences of the problem, and treatment issues. ⋯ Robert Coombs of the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine and other United States and international scholars will be reviewed. Cross-national policies in this field will be highlighted. Unresolved critical issues will be noted and future needed research will be suggested.
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Substance use & misuse · Aug 2003
ReviewHow can sociological theory help our understanding of addictions?
Those who work in the addiction field usually use the pharmacological or medical model, psychological theories of behavior, or operate within the confines of a criminal justice perspective. Contributions from the field of sociology are limited to use of the methods of sociological investigations, primarily population surveys, which, typically, are used to identify groups at-risk for specific types of drug use. ⋯ Experts in addiction have accused sociologists who study addiction of being "atheoretical." Paradoxically, in the sociology field, the most highly cited article is Merton's theory of addiction. This article will examine the contributions of sociological theory to our understanding of addiction, including social definitions of "the problem of addiction" and mechanisms to account for individual drug use within a social context that defines it as problematic.
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Controlling drug use--a dynamic, global, politicalized process--is reviewed in terms of selected types of drugs, "natural levels" of drug demand and use, drug markets and the drug market environment, types of traffickers, illicit drug trade profits, approaches to drug control ("War on Drugs", "Zero Tolerance" programs and policies, "normalizing" and legalizing selected drugs), including UN's then relatively recent "Balanced Approach" and facets of drug law enforcement (drug prices and purity levels and values of drug seizures), including various rarely noted benefits to intervention programs and control agents. Unresolved issues and needed "tools" are noted while considering the implications of the first UN's World Drug Report data.
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Substance use & misuse · Dec 2001
Review Case ReportsAssessment and treatment of addictive sexual disorders: relevance for chemical dependency relapse.
Despite some skepticism about the existence of sexual addiction, the addiction model has proven very useful for treating compulsive sexual behaviors. Addictive sexual disorders often coexist with chemical dependency and are a frequently unrecognized cause of chemical dependency relapse. Sex addiction also contributes significantly to the spread of HIV disease. This paper reviews the differential diagnosis of addictive sexual disorders, their assessment. their treatment, and their interaction with chemical dependency, and provides information about 12-step (mutual-help) resources.
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Substance use & misuse · Aug 2000
ReviewNurses' attitudes toward substance misusers. III. Emergency room nurses' attitudes, nurses' attitudes toward impaired nurses, and studies of attitudinal change.
Emergency room nurses generally regard alcohol and drug misusers as troublesome patients and dislike caring for them. Surveys of nurses' and nurse managers' attitudes toward impaired nurses, all published in recent years, suggest that they are generally supportive of impaired nurses and sanguine about their prospects for recovery; nonetheless, a substantial minority oppose the return to work of a formerly substance-misusing nurse colleague. Programs designed to change nurses' attitudes toward substance misusers are generally ineffective, although significant gains in substance-related knowledge are commonly reported.