Book Review
Clinician's Guide to Substance Abuse
David Smith and Richard Seymour
ISBN: 0-071182-57-8; 2001; 346 pages; McGraw-Hill Education;
Wendy Moyle
Research Centre for Clinical and Community Practice Innovation, Griffith Health Institute, Griffith University, Gold Coast QLD
This text is written by two Americans; a drug and alcohol medical practitioner and a non-medical clinic director and editor. The authors emphasise that there is a difference between substance abuse and substance dependence and refer to clients as having a disease that may be triggered. They state that 100 per cent of addicts have contact with health professionals during their drug-using career. Thus, the text was written to help health professionals to identify addicts and potential addicts within their practice. The text also aims to assist health professionals to understand the principles of diagnosis and assessment; the nature of the disease and the drugs, including tobacco and alcohol, that can trigger it; potential medical complications and sequelae; and the basics of treatment.
The text is set out in an easily read format that uses simple or non-technical language and multiple headings to assist the reader to identify areas of interest, as well as to highlight particular components of the text. Topic areas covered are the nature of addictive diseases, history and basic pharmacology of addictive substances, addiction and the human brain, signs and symptoms of abuse and addiction, diagnosis, treatment, and supporting recovery. There is a broad enough view covered of the modern social drugs of abuse to be helpful, for example, to school health nurses or to nurses working within the area of drug and alcohol.
The main limitation of this text is the description of the Californian Acts, such as the Narcotic Act, Controlled Substance Act and other drug legislation because these are not applicable to its Australian readers. Furthermore, although the text has an explicit description of a twelve-step treatment program, the emphasis on a disease rather than a preventive approach is limiting, because this fails to address relapse prevention therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy. Finally, although the text was only just published in 2001, the chapter on common medical and psychiatric complications of abuse and addiction appears to be very out dated especially on information involving treatment of comorbid psychotic conditions.
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