Mental health and substance use disorders are ubiquitous conditions that have an enormous impact on individuals and families, and often lead to social and financial burdens, and sometimes catastrophes. Current Controversies in Mental Health and Addictions: An Expert's Anthology is a compilation of book and movie reviews, opinion blogs, and online articles on mental health and addiction. This compelling anthology helps readers understand and apply specific and every day mental health problems and their solutions. The material is organized into sections that address topics such as substance use, abuse, and addiction; borderline personality disorder; depression and bipolar disorders; suicide; and recovery. The high-interest content includes selections on how people with mental illnesses can have lives of contribution and how to keep them from becoming violent; treatment choices for alcoholism and substance use disorders; mental health law; adverse childhood experiences; wartime and other post-traumatic stress disorders; biomarkers for depression; and more. Current Controversies in Mental Health and Addictions provides a wealth of valuable information and insight for mental health professionals and lay readers alike. Applicable to numerous disciplines and students at various points in their pre-professional education, the book is particularly well-suited to courses in psychology, social work, counseling, nursing, addiction, and pre-medicine.

Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War examines how intoxicants have been put to the service of states, empires and their armies throughout history. Since the beginning of organized combat, armed forces have prescribed drugs to their members for two general purposes: to enhance performance during combat and to counter the trauma of killing and witnessing violence after it is over. Stimulants (e.g. alcohol, cocaine, and amphetamines) have been used to temporarily create better soldiers by that improving stamina, overcoming sleeplessness, eliminating fatigue, and increasing fighting spirit. Downers (e.g. alcohol, opiates, morphine, heroin, marijuana, barbiturates) have also been useful in dealing with the soldier's greatest enemy - shattered nerves. Kamienski's focuses on drugs "prescribed" by military authorities, but also documents the widespread unauthorised consumption by soldiers themselves. Combatants have always treated with various drugs and alcohol, mainly for recreational use and as a reward to themselves for enduring the constant tension of preparing for. Although not officially approved, such "self-medication" is often been quietly tolerated by commanders in so far as it did not affect combat effectiveness. This volume spans the history of combat from the use of opium, coca, and mushrooms in pre-modern warfare to the efforts of modern militaries, during the Cold War in particular, to design psychochemical offensive weapons that can be used to incapacitate rather than to kill the enemy. Along the way, Kamienski provides fascinating coverage of on the European adoption of hashish during Napolean's invasion of Egypt, opium use during the American Civil War, amphetamines in the Third Reich, and the use of narcotics to control child soldiers in the rebel militias of contemporary Africa.