This comprehensive resource provides professionals with the framework needed to understand the complex nature of individuals suffering from mental illness and chemical addiciton, incorporates current clinical information, and discusses effective startegies to guide clients to recovery.
This book is a very good clinical view of what folks with dual-diagnosis addiction/mental illness go through. It covers very broad ground, looking at many, many "mental illness" diagnoses, how each is defined, how they interact with addiction, ways the clinician can guide someone with these diagnoses, and how the family can support the person.
This book is meant for those working in the addiction field. It also presents diagnoses from the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders). This book is not, necessarily, for the "lay person." However, if you like clinical books, as I do, it will be a gift of insight into a facet of dealing with "dual-diagnosis."
For an assigned textbook for grad school, it reads pretty well. I would like to see more hard evidence and scientific studies to support some of the facts though.