Scattered Minds explodes the myth of attention deficit disorder as genetically based – and offers real hope and advice for children and adults who live with the condition. Gabor Maté is a revered physician who specializes in neurology, psychiatry and psychology – and himself has ADD. With wisdom gained through years of medical practice and research, Scattered Minds is a must-read for parents – and for anyone interested how experiences in infancy shape the biology and psychology of the human brain. Scattered Minds:
- Demonstrates that ADD is not an inherited illness, but a reversible impairment and 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 ‘distractibility’ is the psychological product of life experience
- Allows parents to understand what makes their ADD children tick, and adults with ADD to gain insights into their emotions and behaviours
- Expresses optimism about neurological development even in adulthood
- Presents a programme of how to promote this development in both children and adults
Author
Dr Gabor Maté (CM) is a Hungarian-born Canadian physician who specializes in the study and treatment of addiction and is also widely recognized for his unique perspective on Attention Deficit Disorder and his firmly held belief in the connection between mind and body health. Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944, he is a survivor of the Nazi genocide. His maternal grandparents were killed in Auschwitz when he was five months old, his aunt disappeared during the war, and his father endured forced labour at the hands of the Nazis. 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. Maté ran a private family practice in East Vancouver for over twenty years. He was also the medical co-ordinator of the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital for seven years. Currently he is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and resource centre for the people of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Many of his patients suffer from mental illness, drug addiction and HIV, or all three. Most recently, he has written about his experiences working with addicts in In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. He made national headlines in defense of the physicians working at Insite (a legal supervised safe injection site) after the federal Minister of Health, Tony Clement, attacked them as unethical.
