Issues relating to alcohol 'misuse' can only properly be understood within their social and environmental contexts. This research and practice based book explores social models of alcohol misuse to offer a sociological approach to its treatment.Through considering the social meaning of women's alcohol use, the book challenges current policy and practice in the field. It raises concerns about the political role of 'treatment' in making women behave, or to be 'well', and aims to deve...

This book aims to show the value but also the difficulties encountered in the application of 'insider knowledge' in service user research. Mental health service users in research considers ways of 'doing research' which bring multiple understandings together effectively, and explains the sociological use of autobiography and its relevance. It examines how our identity shapes the knowledge we produce, and asks why voices which challenge contemporary beliefs about health and the role of trea...

Social Care, Service Users and User Involvement provides a definitive introduction to practical, philosophical and theoretical issues at the heart of user involvement.This book provides an accessible account of the latest research findings regarding user involvement on three levels: the delivery and provision of services, practice and practitioners, and research and evaluation. It explores a wide range of service user needs and concerns, including the latest developments in persona...

Updated with bonus material, including a new foreword and afterword with new research, this New York Times bestseller is essential reading for a time when mental health is constantly in the news.In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades?Interwoven with Whit...

Readers have commented elsewhere:"Actionable and Accessible! An avid reader of anything Dr Jane Davidson writes - she lives up to her Genuine Evaluation reputation by providing a succinct guide that is also accessible in its format and price for those working in evaluation in international development contexts. kind of like being able to download your favorite song and not have to buy the whole DVD. I will use this more than those great, but big books that end up sitting on my shel...

The beautiful true story of a senior woman who defies her deadly illness with a cross-country journey and a desire to live life to the fullest.When Miss Norma was diagnosed with uterine cancer, she was advised to undergo surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. But instead of confining herself to a hospital bed for what could be her last stay, Miss Norma—newly widowed after nearly seven decades of marriage—rose to her full height of five feet and told the doctor, "I'm...

After years of prosecuting hard-core criminals, rising legal star Alan Bell took a private sector job in South Florida’s newest skyscraper. Suddenly, he suffered such bizarre medical symptoms, doctors suspected he’d been poisoned by the Mafia. Bell’s rapidly declining health forced him to flee his glamorous Miami life to a sterile “bubble” in the remote Arizona desert.As his career and marriage dissolved, Bell pursued medical treatments in a race against time, hoping to stay alive ...

The long-awaited concluding volume of Pádraig Yeates' 'Dublin at War' trilogyIn A City in Civil War: Dublin 1921–1924, acclaimed historian Pádraig Yeates turns his attention to Ireland's bloody and hard-fought Civil War and its impact on the capital city and its inhabitants.The fascinating A City in Civil War tells the story of Dublin's troubled passage to independence amidst the acrimony and upheaval of the Civil War, a period in which Dublin became the capital city of an independent Iris...

Population-based survey experiments have become an invaluable tool for social scientists struggling to generalize laboratory-based results, and for survey researchers besieged by uncertainties about causality. Thanks to technological advances in recent years, experiments can now be administered to random samples of the population to which a theory applies. Yet until now, there was no self-contained resource for social scientists seeking a concise and accessible overview of this methodology...

This book brings together the research of philosophers, sociologists, and social scientists. It examines those areas of scientific practice where reliance on the subjective judgment of experts and practitioners is the main source of useful knowledge to address and possibly, bring solutions to social problems. A common phenomenon in applications of science is that objective evidence does not point to a single answer or solution, to a problem. Reliance on subjective judgment, then, becomes n...

The goal is ninety: just ninety clean and sober days to loosen the hold of the addiction that caused Bill Clegg to lose everything. With seventy-three days in rehab behind him he returns to New York and attends two or three meetings each day. It is in these refuges that he befriends essential allies including the seemingly unshakably sober Asa, and Polly, who struggles daily with her own cycle of recovery and relapse.At first, the support is not enough: Clegg relapses for the first...

This book approaches current controversies concerning qualitative and quantitative procedures in the social sciences and incorporates new methods showing how they can supplement each other. It is based on a comprehensive international research project that readers can apply to their findings through the data set provided on the author's home page.