CEACG co-worker M.Soc.Sci. Riikka Perälä defends an etnographic study regards the harm reduction techniques applied in the Finnish drug treatment system in the 2000s.

The implementation of a drug policy based on the harm reduction ideology was started in Finland at the turn of the millennium, in addition to the restrictive drug policy implemented traditionally. The first health conseling service for injecting drug users, based on the harm reduction approach, was opened in the capital region in 1997. The start of the activities was a response to the social and health authorities’ concern in Finland in the 1990s, especially about the spread of bloodborne contagious diseases, HIV and hepatitis, related to injecting drug use. What was new and exceptional about the activities of the health counseling services was that they were particularly aimed at active drug users. In order to come and receive services there, the users did not have to commit themselves to stopping drug use, nor even to present any plans on those lines.

The results of the research show that health counseling services and the harm reduction policy implemented in them have become a significant part of the everyday lives of many problem drug users. At the services, the users receive help and support that is not available elsewhere in society. Both the employees and the visiting clients consider the work in the services more extensive than the agenda of the traditional harm reduction policy: for instance, elements of social and healthcare work play an essential part in the work done at the service, and the services also have a clear connection to the activities elsewhere in the service system. The services have also managed to create new kinds of ways to deal with the drug problem which the clients as well as the employees endorse. The harm reduction policy implemented in Finland is therefore a positive example of significantly increasing the social confidence of a population group that is socially quite excluded, and often even “demonized”, by working methods that listen to them and activate them. This should also be considered in future when planning similar interventions. However, the relationship of the health counseling activities to their environment has tensions, and the authorities, for example, often have a narrow perception of the activity as the exchange of syringes and needles. This, in turn, complicates the successful inclusion of the innovative procedures dominant in the policy into practices of the Finnish drug policy and treatment.

On a theoretical level, the research goes over a research discourse on the forms of social governance typical today. In this respect, the research enriches the recent analyses of governing by highlighting examples of the possibilites of opposition to governance as well as of the new forms of collective action and solidarity available in the prevalent ways of governance.

The defense act will take place on the 23rd of March in the Main Building of University of Helsinki, at the Assebly Hall at 12 pm.

Opponent: Docent Kerstin Stenius, University of Stockholm/THL,
Custos (chair): proffessor Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen.

Thematic issue on different treatment of beverage types in Nordic and Canadian alcohol policy history can be downloaded here.

Contributions by: Øyvind Horverak, Hildigunnur Ólafsdóttir, Esa Österberg, Matilda Hellman & Thomas Karlsson, Norman Giesbrecht et al.

Topic Description
At SoRAD, alcohol and drugs are studied from various social science perspectives. The research is presently divided into three themes. Theme 1: Consumption, problems and norms. The general aim is to study levels and patterns of alcohol and drug use and their association with various related problems and the role of alcohol and drugs in people’s lives. Theme 2: Alcohol and drug policy and its implications includes studies on how substance use is perceived and defined, how policy measures are designed and implemented, and what kinds of concrete and specific effects particular alcohol and drug policies have. Theme 3: Addiction and dependence – societal reactions, treatment and recovery processes. The general aim of research within this theme is to study societal definitions of and reactions to various forms of addiction, and how these have changed with changing societal conditions, to analyze the overall help system from a historical and social-ecological perspective, and to study recovery and change processes that take place outside the help system.

Tobacco, doping, prescription drugs and gambling can also be included in the research area.

The successful applicant is primarily expected to take a leading role in alcohol and drug research from sociological perspectives. The job includes teaching and supervision of doctoral students as well as dissemination of research results to the surrounding society.

See link: SoRAD

– CALL FOR PAPERS –

The Colloquium of the University of Helsinki Centre for Research on Addiction, Control and Governance (CEACG) arranges a Thematic Meeting of the Kettil Bruun Society

Addiction: What Is The Added Value Of The Concept Today?

Convention Hotel Majvik, Helsinki, Finland

14‐17th October, 2012

Background

Addiction is a concept that has relatively recently – within two or three decades – become a common expression that covers no longer only traditional substance use but a wide and growing range of behaviours like gambling, gaming, internet use, even eating disorders, shopping, shoplifting, sexual behaviour and others. The increasingly widespread use has been observed in the public media, in expert discourses, in popular culture, in the world of commercials, and even in everyday talk. The concept of addiction is being introduced in the international classifications of diseases, and addiction is the topic of many research and prevention programmes today.

There is no consistent and commonly agreed neurobiological theory of addiction, although recent brain research has made great progress in identifying some of the mechanisms that make people behave in a way that they recognize as harmful and would rather want to stop. There are well‐known similarities in the brain functions concerning the satisfaction of rather different types of desires, but the evidence is far from convincing to prove that from a biological point of view harmful repetitious behaviours could be lumped together as a singular disorder.

The issue is further complicated when we account for cultural factors. Addiction can be said to be caused from culture in the sense that addicted behaviours are transformations of culturally modified desires. We do not call dependence on proper nutrition, clean air and water an addiction unless their object is a pleasure that results from cultural practices, like preparing food, raising endorphine levels by physical exercise, or getting intoxicated in one way or another.

A third complication arises from the fact that treating excessive behaviours as a syndrome of an underlying disorder individualises the problem and medicalises societal reactions to it. This is why public health experts were cautious of the concept “combined approach” when it was part of the World Health Organization discourse on drugs, tobacco and alcohol in the 1970s, while at the same time recognizing the need to include alcohol in the policy agenda on illicit drugs and psycho‐pharmaceuticals. Instead of paying attention to the supply side, policies framed as prevention of addictions focus on identifying high‐risk individuals and preventing their harmful behaviour.

Also the conditions of prevention and treatment are very different concerning different types of behaviour. Preventing obesity involves measures that are very different from those that arise in substance use prevention, for example. The most extensive body of research exists for alcohol and alcohol dependence. The next large research area will most likely concern gaming, especially gambling. In this developing area the lessons learned from alcohol studies are particularly relevant, because we need new understanding of the pathways from non‐problem use to problems and addiction. Alcohol research experience is of great methodological and theoretical help in this area. Also the policy issues are relatively similar, with wide public and private economic interests involved in both the alcohol trade and in the gambling business. Moral and philosophical issues are also similar, concerning individual freedom of choice and the public good.

Objective

The Colloquium and Thematic meeting provides a platform for discussing the usefulness of framing consumption risks as addictions, or even as different aspects of a singular phenomenon. Critical and careful analysis of evidence, reflexion on the moral and practical implications of the concept in different contexts, and the way forward need to be given a proper and free space of interchange between different points of view. It might be envisioned that some sort of consensus emerges that could be useful for policy‐makers, but this CFP is not foreseeing that as necessary.

Size and structure of the meeting

We aim to attract about 30 – 40 interested experts from several fields to participate and papers will be pre‐circulated. We aim to keep the number of presentations moderate, hoping that participants will read as many papers as possible in advance of the occasion. Presentations will be organised in sessions of 1,5 hours with two or maximum three papers per session, chair and a discussant will be assigned to each session.

Time and venue

The meeting will start on Sunday evening October 14th and last until dinner on Wednesday October

17th. The venue will be the Majvik Conference Hotel near Helsinki.

Organization

The conference will be organized by the University of Helsinki Centre for Research on Addictions,

Control and Governance (CEACG) in collaboration with the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, The Kettil Bruun Society, The Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies and the National Institute of Public Health.

Programme Committee:

Pekka Sulkunen, chair (CEACG, University of Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies)

Franca Beccaria (KBS President, Eclectica, Turin)

Matilda Hellman (CEACG, University of Helsinki)

Anja Koski-Jannes (University of Tampere)

Tomi Lintonen (The Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies)

Mikko Salmela (University of Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies)

Kerstin Stenius (National Institute of Health and Welfare, Helsinki)

 

Conference fee and registration

Conference fee for early birds is 300 euros payable before 30.6.2012

Conference fee (regular) is 400 euros payable 01.07‐16.09.2012.

The conference fee covers meals, the conference tour and dinner, and conference services.

Accommodation in the conference Hotel Majvik (Helsinki/Kirkkonummi, Finland) will be reserved by participants and paid directly to the hotel. Single room in Majvik is 103 euros/night and double room 83 euros/night/person (breakfast included). Detailed information will be issued together with the letter of acceptance of the registration. Room reservations are guaranteed by the hotel until 28.9.2012. All participants should make their own reservations with a credit card directly to the hotel majvik@majvik.fi or by phone +358 9 295 511.

Majvik is on the shore of Espoonlahti, only 25 kilometres from downtown Helsinki, Finland. More about Majvik: http://www.majvik.fi/en/

Limited amount of support for conference fees and travel is available for researchers who otherwise would not be able to participate. Requests should be submitted together with the abstract and registration.

MORE DETAILS: matias.karekallas@helsinki.fi

Deadlines

16.04.2012        Registration and abstract submission (matias.karekallas@helsinki.fi)
01.05.2012        Letter of acceptance of the registration
30.06.2012        Payment of early bird registration fee 300 euros
15.09.2012        Paper submissions deadline
16.09.2012        Payment of regular registration fee 400 euros
16.09.2012        Free cancellation ends

The chaotic ongoing war on drugs in Mexico is portrayed in the new film “Miss Bala”, directed by Gerardo Naranjo. NY Time’s review describes:

“The film’s foreboding is a reflection of the national mood as Mexico enters the sixth year of the government’s frontal assault on drug traffickers. Estimates put the death toll around 50,000 since 2006, and the murders pile up relentlessly. What feeds despair here more than the daily violence, though, is the suspicion that nobody in charge has the ability, the will or the integrity to defeat the criminals and the corruption that supports them. The anxiety that anyone can become a victim guides “Miss Bala.””

Read the review here.

Another topical movie, “Shame”, directed by Steve McQueen, portrayes a struggle with sex addiction by a man in New York. Time Out describes‘Shame’ as “interested in the stark immediacy of one man’s world and drawing us into that world without easy explanations. It’s a work that feels, both for our times and of them”

Read the whole review here.

Mielenterveys ja päihdepalvelut -osasto (MIPO) hakee Vaasaan tai Helsinkiin tutkijaa määräaikaiseen työsuhteeseen. Tehtävä täytetään sopimuksen mukaan mahdollisimman pian 18 kuukauden ajaksi.

Tehtävänä on toimia EU:n tutkimusohjelman rahoittaman REFINEMENT-hankkeen kansallisena koordinaattorina, toteuttaa eurooppalaisen hankkeen kokonaisarvioinnin ja osallistua eurooppalaiseen yhteistyöhön mielenterveyspalvelujen rahoitusmallien kehittämiseksi. Tehtävän sijoituspaikka on Vaasa tai Helsinki.

Työn tärkein tehtävä on mielenterveyspalvelujen asiakaspolkujen mallintaminen, simulointi ja analysointi tilastomenetelmin ja visuaalisesti (esim MagnaView-ohjelmalla) perustuen yksilötason reksiteridataan. Työtehtäviin kuuluu sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollon käyttöä käsittelevien rekisteriaineistojen ja muiden kvantitiivisten aineistojen analysointi ja raportointi EU:n tasolla, sekä kansainvälisten tieteellisten julkaisujen valmistelu ja viimeistely.Tehtävä edellyttää perehtyneisyyttä tilastolliseen SAS-ohjelmaan. Tutkija vastaa hankkeen arvioinnin suunnittelusta ja toteutuksesta. Tutkija osallistuu myös MIPOn muuhun asiantuntijatyöhön.

REFINEMENT HAKU

The Kettil Bruun Society’s Annual Symposium is held in Stavanger in 2012.

It is hosted by University of Stavanger – UiS, International research Institute – IRIS, Alcohol and Drug Research- KORFOR, Rogaland A-senter – RAS and Stavanger Universitetssykehus.

The primary purpose of the symposium is to provide a forum where researchers involved in studies on alcohol can exchange ideas about their ongoing research.

The Symposium focuses on the discussion of papers that are pre-circulated electronically at this website. Papers are presented in 10-minute segments, followed by comments from the discussant and general audience participation. Any person who submits a paper may be asked to be a discussant or chair of a session.

The annual meeting in June now stands as a junction for several projects and ad hoc convents. The meeting in Stavanger in June 2012 will be the 38th of this kind, following the meeting in Lausanne 2010 and Melbourne in 2011.

Pre-symposium workshops and special meetings will be held on Saturday June 2, and Sunday June 3. Information about workshops will be posted as soon as the program is ready.
Both the Pre-symposium workshops and the symposium sessions will be held at the University of Stavanger – www.uis.no

Key dates:
Dec 10: Application for travel support closes
Jan 10: Early bird registration closes
Feb 1: Call for abstract closes
April 1: Registration closes
May 1: Submission of papers closes
June 4-8: Conference

It is now possible to sign up for the conference