Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

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None of this is achieved by an act of will, and it is possible one will not succeed completely. That is not important. What is important is to engage in the process, difficult as that is. Healing is not an event, not a single act. It occurs by a process; it is in the process itself. (320) A comment from my husband after we got married saying that, having grown up at the beginning of the YouTube age, he had "given himself mild ADHD." At the end of June, my therapist asked if I had ever been diagnosed with ADD as a child. I said no, and found the idea amusing. Yes! Numerous studies show that Americans are more socially isolated than ever before. People have fewer friends and live further away from their families. They work more, too – in two senses. First off, they work longer hours. In 1935, the average worker had 40 hours of free time a week; by 1990, free time was down to just 17 hours. It’s also more common for both parents to work full-time jobs. Private childcare is expensive, and subsidized childcare is badly underfunded. Parental leave is patchy and, generally, short. As a result, caregivers have less time for their children. They are also more likely to be stressed. Wages are stagnating, and fraying community and family ties mean they have access to smaller and smaller support networks.

So, our collective workaholism––whether chosen or coerced––could be one of the main drivers of the ADD epidemic. Combine that with the meteoric rise of social media and its attendant mental health risks; the capitalistic incentives of pharmaceutical companies that produce drugs like Ritalin, Adderall, and Dexedrine; and the profit margins of insurance companies that act as gatekeepers to “legitimate” treatment; and you’ve got a real mess on your hands. All of this is purely speculative, so take it with a grain of salt, but it was interesting and fun for me to knit these threads together and I thought it might be helpful to share this part of my learning and exploration process. I don't have ADD, as far as anyone can tell, but share enough of the challenges related to it that this book helped a lot. I know, I know. You're reconsidering your opinion of my mental abilities and private beliefs. Before you make a final decision, let me share a few experiences. Hypersensitivity is the heritable condition that explains how environmental and genetic factors interact in ADD. Put simply, ADD is caused by the impact of the environment on particularly sensitive infants. At this point, we can start connecting the dots. Inattentiveness is rarely total, though. In fact, doctors sometimes miss ADD diagnoses because their patients are capable of hyperattentive focus. For example, a child who is inattentive at school may happily spend hours poring over maps in the evening. The thing is, the ADD mind can muster enough focus and motivation to complete tasks if those tasks are intrinsically interesting. A child with ADD who finds geography fascinating will have no problems focusing on studying maps. But that focus doesn’t carry over to other tasks that don’t interest her – science class, say, or tidying her room. Also, hyper-attentiveness often involves shutting out the rest of the world to engage in a single absorbing activity. That, too, is a feature of poor attention regulation.He emigrated to Canada with his family in 1957. After graduating with a B.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a few years as a high school English and literature teacher, he returned to school to pursue his childhood dream of being a physician.

PDF / EPUB File Name: Scattered_Minds__The_Origins_and_Healing_o_-_Gabor_Mate.pdf, Scattered_Minds__The_Origins_and_Healing_o_-_Gabor_Mate.epubFrom there he speaks about how there is no place for blame - which I agree with 100% - and all he is stating, is what he has noticed in his practice and research. When we try to explain today’s epidemic of obesity in countries like the United States, we look at changing lifestyles, not genes. So let’s apply that lens to ADD. Recall what we said about infants and their environment. Attunement, the emotional bond between child and caregiver, plays a critical role in cognitive development. The question is, has something changed in the parenting environment in recent decades which might be getting in the way of attunement? Hi Emma! Thanks for taking the time to read my review and share your input. Given that I’m neither a doctor nor an expert on ADHD, I’ll take your word for it. For my part, I found Maté’s point of view instructive, but I certainly don’t think it’s the only (or necessarily the best) perspective with which we can productively approach the problem of ADHD. He also gives readers a lot of hope that people with ADD can find peace and live wonderful lives. I've appreciated a slew of evidence-based recommendations for managing and healing my own ADD, and I had a breakthrough as a result of reading them; that's worth the price of admission alone. I haven't yet read the recommendations about children, but my guess is that there's equally helpful information about supporting a child with ADD. Studies with monkeys tell us what happens to developing brains when you physically remove caregivers. Separate an infant monkey from its mother for six days, for example, and its dopamine levels will plummet. Research with human infants tell us what happens when caregivers are emotionally absent – physically present but emotionally unavailable. One cause of such unavailability is depression. Several studies show that infants whose mothers are depressed have significantly higher cortisol levels than infants whose mothers aren’t. That’s significant because prolonged exposure to high levels of cortisol depletes dopamine.