Leonard Jason – författare

This work is a description of vulnerabilities that help account for many of the serious problems facing contemporary society in industrialized countries, including high rates of crime; homelessness; alcohol, tobacco, and other drug addictions; and a breakdown of the psychological sense of community.Historical, philosophical, and epistemological issues are also explored in this book as a foundation for understanding what appears to have gone wrong. Several solutions are suggested, borrowing heavily from the fields of education, religion, and mythology. Several wisdom traditions are presented as illustrations of alternative conceptualizations for defining mental health, along with discussion of the implications of borrowing from these models to set new directions for the helping fields. The final chapters provide examples, from communities of healing to successful community-based interventions, of how these elements promote human well-being and social improvement today.

For good reasons, Americans are growing concerned about the cost of health care and housing. There are many reasons why people need care-the addiction of a teenage child or spouse, an elderly relative in need of nursing home care, a psychological disorder, or a chronic medical condition—but even moderately successful institutional solutions for these problems are often too costly to be truly helpful. The cost of healthcare is so high it can result in homelessness. Leonard Jason and Martin Perdoux show us a relatively low-cost and effective solution growing in neighborhoods across the country: true community. People are moving in together to meet each other's needs and, in the process, create a much higher quality of life than they would find in an institution. People living together in these healing communities include the elderly, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, and people suffering from mental illness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, AIDS, or Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. These communities offer them a way to recover the caring, structure, direction, and respect that a strong family can provide. The authors of this work show us how communities created out of necessity by their members constitute a more sustained, natural means to healing.In his foreword, Thomas Moore points out that the communities described in this book are not only physical homes, but also shelters for the soul, places to find the deepest kind of security. Here you will see concrete ways imaginative leaders help those in trouble find themselves rather than become dependent on institutions. It is a new and promising imagination of how social healing works: not by setting up more programs, but by treating people in trouble as human beings, with certain emotional and social needs. This book teaches how to re-imagine this whole process, and now, in an increasingly technical and lonely world, we need this precious wisdom more than ever.

Research on treatment outcome for addictive disorders indicates that a variety of interventions are effective. However, the progress clients make in treatment frequently is undermined by the lack of an alcohol and drug free living environment supporting sustained recovery. This book suggests that treatment providers have not paid sufficient attention to the social environments where clients live after residential treatment or while attending outpatient programs. It also describes the need for alcohol and drug free living environments.We then review the history of communal living for recovering addicts and alcoholics and provide concrete examples of the Oxford House model, which is a widespread communal living option for over 10,000 recovering persons in the US. The structure and philosophy of Oxford Houses are presented along with recent outcome studies providing support for their effectiveness.This book was published as a special issue in the Journal of Groups in Addiction and Recovery.

Learn to develop and assess comprehensive youth tobacco interventions!Preventing Youth Access to Tobacco examines the components of a preventive public health intervention directed at reducing the rate of youth tobacco use. This valuable book describes this innovative intervention, which involves making tobacco more difficult for young people to acquire and also calls for fines for possession of tobacco. It illustrates the rationale for this intervention and reviews the literature on the topic, pointing to findings that indicate that this kind of comprehensive intervention has been shown to be effective.From the editors: “The amount of human pain and suffering caused by tobacco use is immeasurable. Preventing youth smoking initiation of the most effective way of reducing long-term mortality from heart disease, chronic lung disease, and other tobacco-related disorders. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, killing over 400,000 people each year. This is more people than die of AIDS, homicide, suicide, automobile accidents, illegal drug use, and fires combined. Despite these facts, 22.9 of adult Americans and 13.8 of Americans under 18 smoke cigarettes.”This essential book can provide some much-needed answers, showing you:effective ways of reducing the rate of regular smoking among adolescents how to assess a community’s readiness to change how to gauge the effectiveness of tobacco laws directed toward youth how to judge the comprehensiveness of school-based tobacco interventions what factors influence illegal tobacco sales to minors why merchants sell tobacco to kids illegally and what the legal risks are for minors who try to buy tobacco

Research on treatment outcome for addictive disorders indicates that a variety of interventions are effective. However, the progress clients make in treatment frequently is undermined by the lack of an alcohol and drug free living environment supporting sustained recovery. This book suggests that treatment providers have not paid sufficient attention to the social environments where clients live after residential treatment or while attending outpatient programs. It also describes the need for alcohol and drug free living environments.We then review the history of communal living for recovering addicts and alcoholics and provide concrete examples of the Oxford House model, which is a widespread communal living option for over 10,000 recovering persons in the US. The structure and philosophy of Oxford Houses are presented along with recent outcome studies providing support for their effectiveness.This book was published as a special issue in the Journal of Groups in Addiction and Recovery.