文章基本信息

标题：Editorial Special Issue on Addiction
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作者：Matt Field
期刊名称：Journal of Experimental Psychopathology
电子版ISSN：2043-8087
出版年度：2013
卷号：4
期号：3
页码：224-225
DOI：10.1177/204380871300400301
语种：English
出版社：SAGE Publications
摘要：Publication of this special issue coincides with the long-awaited publication of the fifth version of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). It is interesting to note that although most members of the public have an idea what ‘addiction’ is, the term makes no appearance as a diagnostic label in DSM 5 and indeed it did not appear in previous versions of the DSM either. What most people would think of as ‘addiction’ is captured by the diagnostic category of substance use disorder in DSM 5. This label views alcohol and drug problems as operating on a continuum, with patterns of non-dependent substance use that may pose some risk to health at the beginning of a continuum, and severe dependence at the opposite end of this same continuum. Many researchers would agree that there is no reliable qualitative distinction between heavy but non-dependent substance users and severely dependent users, so the formal abolition of this distinction in DSM 5 has generally been favourably received. The treatment of substance use disorders as operating along a continuum is also useful for experimental psychopathology researchers, because it means that the core psychological processes that underlie the transition from benign to more harmful and dependent patterns of substance use can be studied and modelled in different groups of substance users, ranging from those who use substances only ‘socially’, up to and including patients who are receiving detoxification treatment for the physical symptoms of dependence.