Do the tools to quantify addiction help to define it?
These are the questions being addressed by a team of researchers based at the Australian National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University, Australia, who have analysed the tools used to identify substance abuse and addiction to understand how they contribute to or stabilise the realities of addiction. The researchers, Dr Robyn Dwyer and Dr Suzanne Fraser, writing in the journal Health Sociology Review , identify five key processes by which the tools used to screen or diagnose addiction which help to establish, standardise and normalise an addiction within an individual. They conclude that some of the tools may contribute to establishing an addiction, and suggest further research into the choice of tools used. Dwyer and Fraser identify five key processes by which these tools can be analysed and considered to establish or standardise an addiction; reduction, expression, quantification, normalisation and populationisation. They believe that through these processes more and...