Download Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It PDF

Rating: (80 reviews) Author: Gabor Mate ISBN : 9780452279636 New from $12.13 Format: PDF

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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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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• Product Details
• Table of Contents
• Reviews

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Plume (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452279631
• ISBN-13: 978-0452279636
• Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 5.2 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Download Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It PDF

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.

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.