Warren K. Bickel – författare

Addiction to alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs is one of the major public health issues of our time. In the United States, one in five deaths is the result of addictive drug use. This innovative book critically examines drug addiction treatment in the United States. It explores specific challenges (scientific, medical, social, and legal) to reaching the goal that treatment for drug addiction should be as accessible as treatments for diseases of the heart, liver, and lungs which often result from the use of addictive drugs. These essays, written by leaders in addiction science, medicine, and health policy, present diverse and often opposing points of view to foster thought and discussion. The book consists of three parts. Part I examines the emerging science and theories that underlie the development of specific models for treating addiction to illicit opioids and stimulants, alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drugs.Part II explores the complications raised by the diversity of those with addictions, ranging from pregnant women who use intravenous drugs, young men who abuse methamphetamines, youths who smoke cigarettes, and adults who abuse alcohol to those who smoke marijuana or abuse prescription drugs. Part III provides a detailed analysis of health care, social, and policy issues that challenge our views about addiction and its treatment. It addresses controversial topics such as whether addiction should be considered a disease or a behavior, whether addiction should be handled as a criminal offense or treated as a public health problem, and whether stigmatizing addiction is helpful or not. Throughout the book, compelling examples of addiction art explore the human side of addiction through the lens of visual artists' stunning insights into addiction and recovery. Addiction Treatment provides a solid foundation for understanding addiction as a treatable illness and for establishing a framework for effective treatment in the twenty-first century.

Behavioral economics is a rapidly developing area of psychological science that has synergistically merged microeconomic concepts with behavioral research methods. A driving force behind the growth of behavioral economics has been its recent application to behaviors that significantly affect health. The book examines the latest behavioral economic research on smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, obesity, gambling, and other poor health habits, and explores the implications for individual and community interventions and policy directions. This innovative book describes new concepts and methods developed in behavioral economics and applies them to understanding health behavior change. The richness of behavioral economic concepts provides novel methods and measures that lend to an understanding of health behavior that is different from previous work in the field. Featuring contributions from experimental and clinical psychologists and economists, this book will be of interest to a broad range of students and professionals concerned with health behavior, including researchers, clinicians, and policymakers, as well as psychologists, educators, and all those who work with people who are currently attempting to make positive health and lifestyle changes.

Behavioral economics is a rapidly developing area of psychological science that has synergistically merged microeconomic concepts with behavioral research methods. A driving force behind the growth of behavioral economics has been its recent application to behaviors that significantly affect health. The book examines the latest behavioral economic research on smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, obesity, gambling, and other poor health habits, and explores the implications for individual and community interventions and policy directions. This innovative book describes new concepts and methods developed in behavioral economics and applies them to understanding health behavior change. The richness of behavioral economic concepts provides novel methods and measures that lend to an understanding of health behavior that is different from previous work in the field. Featuring contributions from experimental and clinical psychologists and economists, this book will be of interest to a broad range of students and professionals concerned with health behavior, including researchers, clinicians, and policymakers, as well as psychologists, educators, and all those who work with people who are currently attempting to make positive health and lifestyle changes.

Impulsivity explores the basis for the seemingly universal tendency to devalue rewards or punishments that are not immediately available. When confronted with any number of modern impulsive behaviors-such as drug use, pathological gambling, marital infidelity, and gluttony-individuals have a choice with two outcomes: an immediate benefit, such as getting high, or a delayed or probabilistic benefit, such as health, money saved, or the satisfaction of a good life. This volume is an approachable, comprehensive overview of the behavioral science and neuroscience of these impulsive choices and their relation to delay discounting-the tendency to devalue temporally distant rewards or punishments, even though they may greatly outbalance the immediate benefit of our choices. The cutting-edge researchers who contributed to this volume have documented cross-species similarities in impulsive decision making and pioneered the neuroscience of impulsive choice. In this text they provide insights into harmless impulsive acts as well as those that dominate and destroy lives. The contributors tackle key issues such as whether impulsivity and risk taking are a trait or state the neuroscience, neuroeconomics, and computational modeling of neural systems underlying impulsivity and the relation between impulsivity and addictions, health decision making, altruism, and attention-deficit disorder. Theoretical debates regarding the origins of impulsivity round out this text, which will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in psychology, behavioral economics, psychopharmacology, behavioral analysis and therapy, and the science of decision making.