64 pages 2 hours read

Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1999

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Summary and Study Guide

Overview

Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder is a self-help book published in 1999 by physician and speaker Gabor Maté. Maté, who worked in palliative care for many years in Vancouver, Canada, uses a mixture of case studies and his own personal experience as a husband and father to present a new, attachment-based framework for understanding attention deficit disorder (ADD). The book critiques modern medicine and directly challenges many of the psychiatric assumptions about the nature and origins of ADD, exploring themes of Skepticism of the Illness Model in ADD Awareness and Treatment, The Centrality of the Attunement Relationship to the Development and Healing of ADD, and The Physiological Impact of Social Pressures on the Family.

This guide refers to the edition published by Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in 1999.

Content Warning: This guide discusses mental health conditions and disorders including attention deficit disorder, addiction, depression, and anxiety and briefly mentions suicide.

Summary

The illness model, Maté says, treats ADD as a series of genetically predetermined behaviors that can be eliminated via medication. Maté’s skepticism of this model stems from the belief that genetic inheritance is inadequate to properly explain the development of neurochemistry and the structures of the brain.

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