Addiction is a fascinating yet vast field with a sometimes overwhelming range of terms and concepts, numerous and often conflicting approaches spanning different fields, and constantly emerging topics that must be considered alongside established ones.

In Understanding Addiction: Key Concepts, Theories and Models, the authors have produced a textbook that addresses these complexities and provided a truly multidisciplinary overview of the field. Accommodating different approaches from a range of disciplines, it traces the integration of emerging and existing topics, all the while giving a comprehensive conceptual analysis of current terms relevant in the discipline today.

Each chapter is structured according to the key terms central to that topic. Each concept is discussed in terms of its historical and applied theoretical position in the discipline and described from a comprehensive appraisal of a variety of discipline viewpoints, such as psychology, medicine, nursing, sociology, social policy and economics. Students will gain a thorough understanding about the place of different concepts within the discipline, their unique origins, and how useful they have been in helping us to understand the study and treatment of addition.