Product Description

A groundbreaking book explains what really causes Attention Deficit Disorder.

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) has quickly become a controversial topic in recent years. Whereas other books on the subject describe the condition as inherited, Dr. Gabor Mate believes that our social and emotional environments play a key role in both the cause of and cure for this condition. In Scattered, he describes the painful realities of ADD and its effect on children as well as on career and social paths in adults. While acknowledging that genetics may indeed play a part in predisposing a person toward ADD, Dr. Mate moves beyond that to focus on the things we can control: changes in environment, family dynamics, and parenting choices. He draws heavily on his own experience with the disorder, as both an ADD sufferer and the parent of three diagnosed children. Providing a thorough overview of ADD and its treatments, Scattered is essential and life-changing reading for the millions of ADD sufferers in North America today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #674679 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-01
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

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.

About the Author
Gabor Mate, M.D., is a physician with a thriving family practice in Vancouver, British Columbia. He currently writes on medical issues for The Vancouver Sun, and has published numerous articles of political and medical commentary in other publications. He has been interviewed extensively--on ADD and other issues--for CBC television and radio.

Customer Reviews

Merlin:"The best thing for being sad is to learn something."
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. Fortunately, a more knowledgeable child psychiatrist said it was inborn so we could relax and quit blaming ourselves. Whew....

That doesn't mean that experiencing this hypersensitivity isn't damaging, even with a more-than-good-enough mother. Or that nurturing a hypersensitive child is easy. It is much more tiring and trying to deal with the ADD child than it is with his or her more resilient sibling.The ADD child triggers anxiety in even the most competent parent. So, it is on the second front, the practical things to do, that this book is most helpful, even hopeful. I return to it again and again (that is, when I haven't mislaid it in one of my more driven ADD moments) to remind myself what to do and what not to do to help myself and my similarly-wired son. For instance, the section on the counter-will-an idea I'd not heard before-made me understand why I am more often than not so suspicious of authority figures. I used to think it was very adolescent of me, and now Dr. Mate tells me it is, and that this is a component of ADD. It was from this notion of a counter-will that I began my search on ways to strengthen the will itself, so as to disengage this adversarial part of me, the counter-will, that aspect of us that doesn't trust. It has been an interesting and fruitful search and I am grateful to Dr. Mate for giving me new ways to think about this way of being in the world.

By the time the ADD child arrives at school, the disconnectedness is ingrained. We are attuned to every slight, intended or not. Other kids find ADDers just as trying as the grown-ups do-it takes a lot of energy to interact with a `wild child' who hogs the teacher's attention or a distracted one whose hypersensitivity presents the perfect opportunity to torture for fun and profit. I've yet to find an ADD adult who liked the social aspects of school, or didn't have horror stories about cruel peers and teachers...

The most important chapters for me have been the ones on medication and on self-parenting. The first, medication, gives the limits of pharmocological help for this disorder. It is very clear about what medicine can and cannot do and the importance of finding a knowledgeable physician. The second, self-parenting, seems like a Mobius strip until Dr. Mate takes apart the results of life-time conditioning and explains the qualities one needs-compassion for self and others, curiosity rather than blame or judgment-in order to embark on a course of change. Whether one has to structure things by herself, or has the good fortune to find competent professional help, Dr. Mate's book is of inestimable help on that journey.

In fact, every time my ADD tendencies pop up and I lose my copy of Scattered, I buy another. And now that my stepson has been diagnosed with ADD, I have an extra copy or two to give his suffering parents, though I would not be without this book.

Scattered is definitely a keeper.

Applauding Gabor Mate
I applaud Gabor Mate for the remarkable contribution he has made to the literature on Attention Deficit Disorder in his book Scattered. Due to both personal and professional interest, I have read and recommended many books and articles on this topic. I find that Scattered has become the first book I recommend to colleagues, clients and anyone interested in learning about, or ruling out ADD. Feedback is consistent with my own reaction--this is a comprehensive and insightful book--an easy, informative, valuable, read for professional and lay people. The role of biology/nature is described so well that the non-scientific reader gains a new level of understanding. When it comes to the role of nurture/environment--Mate truly shines-- capturing the experience of ADD with an insiders wisdom and a refreshing openess, bringing the reader understanding, comfort, hope and pathways to healing. The material on parenting (ADD and the child) is excellent---could be part of a parenting handbook. His writing on change and growth and his understanding of what causes adults to struggle have value across the board --whatever the issues are. One does not have to have, or work with ADD to enjoy and benefit from Scattered.

Maybe the most original book about ADD & most ignored
Mate offers a very fresh, insightful interpretation of ADD as a cognitive vulnerability that may or may not manifest itself, or manifest itself in varying degrees depending on one's environment. In this sense, the book takes a ecological approach to the problem; ADD, according to the author, is not biological determinism and it's not cultural construct and it's not some conspiracy to keep certain children in their place and it's not a pharmaceutical ploy for more business. Anyone who has taken prescribed Ritalin knows it's about the cheapest prescription drug on the market (and has been around nearly the longest). The author simply points out that according to current and provisional informed research (and research can only be provisional unless we can stop time), the idea that symptoms of ADD are a result of many forces--chemical, environmental, cultural, and developmental--just makes sense. Since Mate's analysis is moderately complex in comparison to most analyses in most popular ADD books, it may turn off those who want a quick pat explanation to the "disorder." The author is a doctor with ADD; so his analysis is both research oriented and phenomenological. He is also smart enough not to use the word "prove" in his book because he knows he isn't proving anything: he is simply making his own best inferences based on current knowledge. He makes sense; and he adds to the current literature on the subject. If you have been diagnosed with ADD, you will nod your head in agreement through much of the book. The author also has a gift for writing, having been a former English teacher. Thus, his language is on a level of sophistication which does justice to the subject, and lends his observations authority. This is far different from the "cookbook" breezy style of so many other authors who address the subject.