Summary of Daniel G. Amen's Healing ADD

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 Billy, age 9, had been having problems in school since starting kindergarten. His teachers said he was impulsive and did things without thinking. His parents knew these problems firsthand, and had tried to fix them by sending him to a pediatrician.

#2 Melissa, age 5, had been affectionately labeled the pink tornado. She had a severe case of Ring of Fire ADD. Her parents brought her to see me after she was nearly run down in a parking lot after she opened the car door and ran into a store.

#3 The symptoms of Inattentive ADD, which is commonly but rarely diagnosed in females, are a short attention span, easily distracted, and little substance. After starting treatment, Louanne dramatically improved.

#4 When Gregg first came to see me at the age of 14, he was a wreck. He had just been expelled from his third school for fighting and breaking the rules. He never did his homework, and he talked about dropping out of school. But when I did a test of verbal intelligence on him, his demeanor changed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Feb 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669352174

IRB Media

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Book preview

Insights on Daniel G. Amen's Healing ADD

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Billy, age 9, had been having problems in school since starting kindergarten. His teachers said he was impulsive and did things without thinking. His parents knew these problems firsthand, and had tried to fix them by sending him to a pediatrician.

#2

Melissa, age 5, had been affectionately labeled the pink tornado. She had a severe case of Ring of Fire ADD. Her parents brought her to see me after she was nearly run down in a parking lot after she opened the car door and ran into a store.

#3

The symptoms of Inattentive ADD, which is commonly but rarely diagnosed in females, are a short attention span, easily distracted, and little substance. After starting treatment, Louanne dramatically improved.

#4

When Gregg first came to see me at the age of 14, he was a wreck. He had just been expelled from his third school for fighting and breaking the rules. He never did his homework, and he talked about dropping out of school. But when I did a test of verbal intelligence on him, his demeanor changed.

#5

Brett, 27, had been fired from his fourth job in a year. He blamed his bosses for expecting too much of him, but it was the same old story. Brett had trouble with details, he was often late to work, and he seemed disorganized.

#6

The brain scan of Larry, a 62-year-old man who came into therapy because his wife threatened to start divorce proceedings against him if he didn’t get help, showed decreased prefrontal cortex activity and increased activity in the deep limbic system of his brain.

#7

Lindy, 37, was ready to leave her husband when she first came to see me. She had trouble getting to sleep and couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. She had Overfocused ADD, where she had trouble shifting her attention. This caused her to have to have things a certain way at home and made it hard for her to take notes in school.

#8

ADD has been around for a long time. It was described by the philosopher John Locke in the seventeenth century, and has been part of the psychiatric terminology since the inception of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1952.

#9

People with ADD have a short attention span. They cannot sustain attention and effort over prolonged periods of time. They frequently get distracted, thinking about or doing other things than the task at hand.

#10

People with ADD are often hypersensitive to their senses, and they have trouble suppressing the sounds and sights of the environment. They are also often underactive in the prefrontal cortex, which sends inhibitory signals to the brain’s emotional centers.

#11

People with ADD often complain of being excessively bothered by sounds, especially the chewing sounds of others. They may need white noise to block out the other sounds in the environment.

#12

People with ADD often have a difficult time organizing their space, time, projects, and long-term goals. They typically take a disorganized approach to these things, which dramatically increases the time it takes them to complete them.

#13

People with ADD frequently suffer from poor follow-through, and they will do something as long as there is intense interest. They will put things off until the last minute, when they are pushed to the wall of the deadline.

#14

The prefrontal cortex, which is the brain’s chief executive, is heavily involved with forethought, planning, impulse control, and decision making. When there are problems in this part of the brain, as is typical in people with ADD, exhibiting forethought is a