Transforming Addiction: Gender, Trauma, Transdisciplinarity

Citation

Boreham, M. (2016), "Transforming Addiction: Gender, Trauma, Transdisciplinarity", Drugs and Alcohol Today, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 228-229. https://doi.org/10.1108/DAT-07-2015-0037

Transforming Addiction challenges researchers, clinical practitioners and policy makers to be bold enough to go beyond multidisciplinary working and the biopsychosocial model. The authors argue, convincingly, rather than these models of working being the bench mark of a holistic approach to addiction research, treatment and policy development, in reality they are operationalised by professionals doggedly remaining within their own silos of expertise. This reality is highlighted by contributors to Transforming Addiction as failing to adequately respond to the complexity of addiction and the needs of those most vulnerable, struggling with addiction’s intractable nature in our societies.

In what ways is transdisciplinarity described as tangibly new and improved? Primarily in its guiding principles, which situate addiction within sex and gender; and evolving approaches to trauma, mental health and societal determinants of health. Why is this convincing? The editors have managed to bring together professionals from divergent spheres of addiction research, treatment and policy making to provide examples of why and how they feel they have moved beyond their own professional boundaries to a synthesised shared knowledge with other professionals and their service users, building on what already existed.

Reading Transforming Addiction from the viewpoint of a clinical practitioner provides a great deal of food for thought. Discussing the role of a Canadian Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for infants affected by prenatal substance use, Marcellus takes us from the stigmatising, moralising attitudes levelled at women who use substances during pregnancy, to a model of practice which is as woman focused as it is infant focused. In doing so, Marcellus reminds us: “By focusing on only the substance as harmful, and misuse as an individual, deliberate, poor choice, key points of debate are hidden and missing, such as a full discussion of the barriers of care for substance using women, the lack of treatment services, and the relationship of the substance use to the social condition in women’s lives”. The importance of addressing inequities and the use of power carries as much weight when the focus is directed towards marginalised populations, as it does when describing the relative roles of the practitioner and researcher. In the latter instance transdisciplinarity is also about transparency, and enabling knowledge to flow equally.

From the viewpoint of the researcher, Transforming Addiction poses interesting questions about the processes of arriving at and then answering research questions. In her work as a neuroscientist, Einstein charts how she developed her research methods from a starting point of exploring sex differences in the nervous system, to how this might relate to experiences of female genital mutilation, to collaborations with social scientists to capture women’s narratives, giving context and meaning to experiences of pain. Einstein is refreshingly honest in highlighting some of the barriers she continues to face with regard to transdisciplinary working, difficulties in securing funding, sourcing journals to publish in and, at times, colleagues’ willingness to work across disciplines. She concludes: “By doing transdisciplinary research you have the opportunity to be as true as possible to the question you’re asking” (p. 106).

Transforming Addiction offers the reader a candid insight into their training programme, tools and strategies which aim to foster transdisciplinarity, and embed sex and gender and trauma informed approaches within our work in treatment, research and policy development. Are you by reading this book all set to embark on a transdisciplinary path? Not entirely: each chapter is accompanied by references for further reading which need to be followed up. However, Greaves, Poole and Boyle, with their contributors, have succeeded in providing a fresh challenge to the current, taken for granted approaches. In doing this Transforming Addiction also succeeds in highlighting areas of addiction research, treatment and policy making which presently serve to reinforce stigma and the marginalisation of those we are entrusted with empowering, and in this way they certainly whet the appetite for a transdisciplinary future.