Alcohol and the Community: A Systems Approach to Prevention (International Research Monographs in the Addictions) - Hardcover

Holder, Harold D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521591872 ISBN 13: 9780521591874

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1998

Synopsis

An individual's decision to use alcohol and the frequency, quantity, and situations of use are the result of a combination of biological and social factors. Drinking is not only a personal choice, but also a matter of custom and social behavior, and is influenced by access and economic factors including levels of disposable income and cost of alcoholic beverages. Until prevention efforts cease to focus narrowly on the individual and begin to adopt broader community perspectives on alcohol problems and strategies to reduce them, these efforts will fail. The author challenges the current implicit models used in alcohol problem prevention and demonstrates an ecological perspective of the community as a complex adaptive system composed of interacting subsystems. This important volume represents a new and sensible approach to the prevention of alcohol dependence and alcohol-related problems.

About this title

Book Description

An individual's decision to use alcohol is not only a personal choice, but also a matter of custom and social behavior, and is influenced by access and economic factors including levels of disposable income and cost of alcoholic beverages.The author challenges the current implicit models used in alcohol problem prevention and demonstrates an ecological perspective of the community as a complex adaptive system, an appreciation and understanding of which offers a new approach to the prevention of alcohol dependence and alcohol-related problems.

Review

"Readers seeking clear and concise formulations about alcohol problems and their prevention will find much value in this work. All levels." Choice

"The book is appropriate for a wide audience that could include prevention scientists, those engaged in a broad range of alcohol studies, students seeking to understand how to apply systems thinking to other problem domains, and sophisticated readers who may not be familiar with alcohol studies but who are seeking a basic understanding of alcohol involved community prevention efforts...The book is rich with well conceived and...well executed charts and graphs to illustrate key concepts." Journal on Alcohol

"Logical, convincing and consistent...certainly worth reading, especially by students of addictions and public health in general." Canadian Journal of Public Health

"This book is a much-needed antidote for an overdose of brain biology in the contemporary understanding of alcoholism...Holder's reader is rewarded by a careful review of the research literature and a strongly expressed view that drinking is a community, not merely an individual, problem." Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521591872
• ISBN 13: 9780521591874
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 198