My Top 5 Insights in Working with Substance Use Issues

Richard Hammersley is Emeritus Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Hull and a Practitioner Health Psychologist highly specialised in substance use and addiction. He works with individual clients in private practice and also assesses parents involved in child protection cases. He continues to teach on the MSc Clinical Applications of Psychology at Hull, which prepares students for clinical psychology training and a wide variety of other roles in mental health. Richard is also deputy editor of Addiction Research and Theory and Journal of Addiction, and has also served this role for the journal Addiction. He has co-authored four books on drugs and one on group communication skills in the workplace, as well as writing about 150 academic papers, which include in-depth studies of cocaine, cannabis, MDMA and heroin users. He has also provided research and consultancy services to the Scottish and UK governments, the NHS and the third sector, usually about substance use. His seminal work on connections between drugs and crime bridges psychology, sociology, social work, criminology and social policy. He continues to critique the disease model of addiction and advocates a formulation-based approach to substance use problems.