For people interested in risk management, medical activity represents a stimulating field of study and thought. On the one hand, progress in medical knowledge and technology tends to reduce the risks to survival that individuals would face in the absence of appropriate diagnostic or therapeutic instruments. On the other hand, new medical technologies simultaneously create their own specific risks, sometimes simply because their effects are less well-known than those of established ones. In a sense any medical progress simultaneously generates new risks while destroying old ones. Moreover, unlike many financial risks that can be either divided or transferred to others (e.g. through diversification, insurance or social security) the personal aspects of medical risks are by essence indivisible and non-transferable. As a result, they are in a sense more threatening than financial risks for risk averse patients. These two facts explain and justify the growing interest in risk economics for the fields of medical decision making and health economics. In Risk and Medical Decision Making, part 1 is developed inside the expected utility (E-U) model and analyses how comorbidity risks affect the well-known "test-treatment" thresholds. Part 2 is devoted to a specific non E-U model with the same purpose: how would one define a threshold in this context and how would one value a diagnostic test? In each of these two parts both diagnostic and therapeutic risks are considered.

A guide for everyone involved in medical decision making to plot a clear course through complex and conflicting benefits and risks.

Self-harm in adolescents is a growing problem which has been poorly de-fined, clinically neglected and insufficiently researched. This volume synthesizes the available research on adolescent self-harm and presents the reader with the best available evidence on self-harm treatment. It is aimed at those who treat, research and teach about self-harm.

Every day we make decisions about our health - some big and some small. What we eat, how we live and even where we live can affect our health. But how can we be sure that the advice we are given about these important matters is right for us? This book will provide you with the right tools for assessing health advice.

For the past few years, the author, a renowned economist, has been applying the statistical tools of economics to decision making under uncertainty in the context of patient health status and response to treatment. He shows how statistical imprecision and identification problems affect empirical research in the patient-care sphere.