SCATTERED MINDS: INTO THE INTERIOR OF ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER. (Dr. Gabor Mate)

                                                                 

                                             SCATTERED MINDS (Review)

Ahot brain. With sparks flying in from everywhere threatening at any moment to set alight the whole business. And the cooling influence of the judgement-passing frontal lobes arrives too late — too late, that is, to control the impulse or outburst, but not too late to produce regret. Such are the workings of the mind of those who inhabit a brain disordered by attentional deficit. Dr. Gabor Maté, who is among the estimated three percent of the human race — equal proportions of men and women — who have attention deficit disorder (ADD), has done us a great service. In Scattered Minds he tells those of us who do not have ADD, and cannot ever really know, what it is like to have ADD. Like so many adults with ADD, Maté found out that he had the disorder only by chance. The realization came when he decided to write his regular medical column in The Globe and Mail on ADD: “to dip my toe in was to know that, unawares, I had been immersed in it all my life, up to my neck.” He had always known there was something amiss: “Terrified of my mind, I had always dreaded spending a moment alone with it.” After the diagnosis was confirmed, there followed a time of what he terms “ADD epiphany” as he learned how this knowledge would change his life. It has not been all ecstasy, but the road forward became clearer for him. Subsequently, his three children were diagnosed with ADD.


                                                                     

                                                   SCATTERED MINDS
                            The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder (Book)

• Demonstrates that ADD is not an inherited illness, but a reversible impairment, a developmental delay
• Explains that in ADD, circuits in the brain whose job is emotional self-regulation and attention control fail to develop in infancy—and why
• Shows how “tuning out” and distractibility are the psychological products of life experience, from in utero onwards
• Allows parents to understand what makes their ADD children tick, and adults with ADD to gain insights into their emotions and behaviors
• Expresses optimism about neurological development even in adulthood
• Presents a program of how to promote this development in children and adults alike

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