Alcohol Use Disorders: The NICE Guideline on the Diagnosis, Assessment and Management of Harmful Drinking and Alcohol Dependence
National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH)
Harmful drinking leads to 2.5 million deaths
annually and alcohol is the third leading risk factor globally for
burden of illness. Alcohol-use disorders are an increasing problem
in children and young people. Physical and psychiatric
comorbidities add to the considerable burden that alcohol-use
disorders can pose to the individual and to society. This
guideline enables healthcare professionals to recognise and manage
these prevalent problems in adults and in young people aged 10 to
17 years, and offer effective treatments to their patients.
The guideline reviews the evidence for the diagnosis and assessment
of alcohol-use disorders, organisation and delivery of care,
settings for assisted alcohol withdrawal, psychological
interventions, and pharmacological interventions for assisted
withdrawal and relapse prevention. It also includes health economic
modelling of pharmacological interventions as an adjunctive
treatment for the prevention of relapse and a chapter on the
experience of care.
Readership: Primarily specialist alcohol services.
Though the guideline will also be useful for all staff working in
healthcare services; plus academics and researchers.
List of the other NICE mental health
guidelines
NICE Mental Health Guidelines
These guidelines from NICE set out clear
recommendations, based on the best available evidence, for health
care professionals on how to work with and implement physical,
psychological and service-level interventions for people with
various mental health conditions.
The book contains the full guidelines that cannot be obtained
in print anywhere else. It brings together all of the evidence that
led to the recommendations made, detailed explanations of the
methodology behind their preparation, plus an overview of the
condition covering detection, diagnosis and assessment, and the
full range of treatment and care approaches.
The accompanying free CD-ROM contains all the data used as
evidence, including:
- Included and excluded studies.
- Profile tables that summarise both the quality of the evidence
and the results of the evidence synthesis.
- All meta-analytical data, presented as forest plots.
- Detailed information about how to use and interpret forest
plots.
Contents
- Preface
- Alcohol dependence and harmful alcohol
use
- Methods used to develop this guideline
- Experience of care
- Organisation and delivery of care
- Psychological and psychosocial
interventions
- Pharmacological interventions
- Summary of recommendations
- Appendices
- References
- Abbreviations