Young People and Substance Misuse Edited by Ilana Crome, Hamid Ghodse, Eilish Gilvarry & Paul McArdle. London: Gaskell. 2004. 240 pp. £15.00 (pb). ISBN 0 904671 012

In keeping with the current trend of full disclosure, I should point out that this book is published by Gaskell and that I consider the editors to be friends and colleagues. I am also not a fan of multiply authored books. Fourteen contributors (including the editors themselves) have been involved in producing a book of 14 chapters.

The chapters flow logically from prevention through to treatment and it is assumed that the reader has no specialist knowledge of the field. This makes it ideal for those identified on the back cover as among the intended readership – teachers, carers, parents, researchers and policy-makers. However, psychiatrists with a background in general or child and adolescent psychiatry or in substance misuse would have to read a great deal of text before coming across any new knowledge specific to young people.

A few chapters are outstanding. First, the chapter on smoking by Kate Woodhouse, flows smoothly from prevalence through prevention to treatment. Its inclusion is essential, given that, as the author states, ‘tobacco use is the leading behavioural cause of poor health, early death and health inequality in the UK’. In the chapter on treatment, the academic bringing together of the evidence that ‘treatment works’ and the subsequent descriptive outline of treatments used in practice were neatly done and give a good sense of what should and could be done. For policy-makers, the final chapter on developing an evidence-based model for services should be required reading. Two other chapters – one on the ethical and legal principles relevant to young people and substance misuse, and the other on the implications of parental substance misuse – are timely, as we live in an increasingly litigious society, and we have a current shift in focus onto the needs of the child as paramount.