A highly practical guide to the identification and management of drinking problems. Arguing for an approach that treats alcohol as a risk factor for ill health and disease, the book calls for a response to drinking problems that goes beyond the provision of sophisticated specialist treatment for persons labelled alcoholics and gives special importance to the detection of incipient alcohol problems and their early management. To this end, the book sets out a number of model questionnaires, checklists, and instruments that can be used as everyday tools for early detection and intervention in primary health care. The organization of the book follows the logical sequence of a strategy for the prevention and management of alcohol problems in primary care. The first chapter examines the part played by alcohol and drinking in communities and in individual lives. Each individuals consumption is determined to be a balance between factors that encourage drinking and those that discourage it. The second chapter discusses this balance and how it varies over a lifetime. Other chapters catalogue the social, psychological, and physical harm that can result from the use of alcohol, discuss the resources available for preventing and managing alcohol problems, and list precise measures for prevention. The remaining chapters provide detailed practical advice on screening and management. Readers are given a structure for ascertaining and categorizing alcohol-related risks that can be used in the day-to-day screening of patients and in decisions on what type of action is required. Biological markers are covered together with a number of assessment tools. A chapter devoted to management offers advice on ways of informing, advising, and helping both the large majority of patients who will make minimal demands on staff time and the remainder, whose management will require the combined efforts of staff, family, and outside groups.

eng fre ger.

WHODOC

WHO monograph

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