Scattered: How A.D.D. Originates and What You Can Do Author: Gabor Mate | Language: English | ISBN:
0525944125 | Format: PDF
Scattered: How A.D.D. Originates and What You Can Do Description
From Publishers Weekly
In one of the most comprehensive and accessible books about Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Mat?, a Canadian physician and popular medical columnist, challenges many accepted notions about the condition, which afflicts more than three million children and a significant number of adults. An ADD sufferer himself, and the father of three children battling the disorder, Mat? discusses its origins and development, drawing on four years of study, research and patient interviews. Since its discovery in North America in 1902, ADD has been characterized by a poor ability to focus, deficient control of impulses and hyperactivity. Taking a maverick stance, Mat? doesn't believe it is purely a genetic condition, but rather one with a physiological component linked to culture and environment. He contends that it can stem from a variety of ordinary sourcesAfrom stress to marital woes, from school and peer pressures to substance abuseAcausing serious problems in academic achievement, employment and relationships. In chapters that include his patients' commentaries on the impact of ADD on their lives, Mat? discusses its symptoms, ADD in the classroom and effective ways parents can handle and treat the unruly behavior of children with the disorder. In the closing pages of this well-documented but sure-to-be-controversial book, he effectively hammers home his suspicions about the possible over-prescription of Ritalin and other drugs to control rather than heal children, and proposes that, in some cases, emotional support, patience and love can be more powerful remedies than chemicals.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Among the recent epidemic of books on Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), this one is valuable for its stress on environmental issues and the author's experience with the syndrome in his own family. Though a physician himself as well as a columnist for Canadian newspapers, Mat? dismisses the "medical model" of ADD, arguing that it is the combined result of genes and stressed parenting. Neurological deficits intervene in this process. Drug therapy is viewed as useful but no panacea for what is essentially a problem of society and human development. Well-written explanations and descriptive case studies fill the book, and guiding principles and suggestions for reversing the course of ADD through therapy make it useful for parents, stricken adults, and counselors alike. Focusing on parents as the cause of psychological disorders is not a new idea, though, and Timothy Wilens's Straight Talk About Psychiatric Medications for Kids (LJ 2/15/99) may be more practical in a society where drug therapy is ubiquitous. For public libraries with comprehensive ADD collections.AAntoinette Brinkman, Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Dutton Adult; 1 edition (August 1, 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0525944125
- ISBN-13: 978-0525944126
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
Having been in therapy longer than Woody Allen, I practice what Karl Menninger called `bibliotherapy'-i.e., reading widely and deeply in the field of mental or emotional disorders. Since I'm a voracious reader, and since I've been doing this for twenty years, I sometimes feel there isn't much left for a layman to learn, or at least nothing much that could be called new. But Dr. Mate's book is wonderfully helpful on two fronts: first, it is a "why-you-or-your -child-are-like-this" book, and second, it is a "and-here-is-what-you-can-do-to-allieviate-the-condition"book. Not cure it, mind you, just make the cards you drew a little easier to play.
On the first front, the neurobiology of ADD, Dr. Mate makes his point conclusively: this disorder arises first in the infant, in how he or she is wired-or not-and it occurs in the make-up of the hypersensitive baby, highly aware and from the very beginning suffering at the smallest slings and arrows life offers. Resilient children roll with the punches; ADD kids are flattened by them and get back up more slowly. Momma used to call this type "high-strung" and, boy, was she ever right. Dr. Mate even points out a study done on the vagus nerve of five-month old babies that turns out to be highly predictive of which of them will later, at fourteen months, prove to be "more reactive to maternal separation." In other words, ADD could as well serve as an acronym for Attachment Deficit Disorder. People who are hypersensitive have a disordered attachment to their caretakers that is pre-verbal and pervasive. One had better learn to deal with the fact that the fault is mainly synpatical, not social. My family doctor told me that my then-nine-year-old son suffered from severe separation anxiety because he hadn't been in pre-school or away from his parents enough.
I must say that my opinion regarding Dr. Mate's "Scattered" is... well... "Scattered!" On the one hand, it contains some of the most eloquently poetic descriptions of A.D.D. I've ever seen (some of which come directly from Dr. Mate's patients). One need look no further than the chapter headings to see how beautifully the ambiguity of poetry describes the A.D.D.experience- headings like "So Much Soup and Garbage Can," "Forgetting to Remember the Future," "A Surrealistic Choreography," "Severed Thoughts and Flibbertigibbets," and "My Marshmallow Caught Fire." In fact, on page 43, Dr. Mate offers one of the most poignant metaphors for A.D.D. I've read, in his description of the trees on the shores of Vancouver Island. Passages like this one make "Scattered" a worthwhile book to own, and I've recommended it highly to several people on that basis alone. But while "Scattered" delivers in grand style on the promise of the first part of its title (i.e. "How A.D.D. Originates"), it fails to deliver consistently on the promise of its second (i.e. "What You Can Do About It"). This unrealized expectation is established by the last sentence of the very same page referenced above (p.43), which reads: "Fortunately, as we will see when we come to the chapters on the healing process in ADD, neurological and psychological maturation can take place at any time during the life cycle, even in late adulthood." As well-established as the author's intentions are for the remainder of the book, what unfortunately follows is heavily and disproportionately weighted more towards offering specific advice to parents of A.D.D. children than towards offering practical solutions for the A.D.D. adult.
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