Customer Reviews

Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults (Yale University Press Health & Wellness)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Over the last two years, I have been immersed both professionally and personally in exploring the relationship between executive functioning in the brain and personal functioning out in the world. This book is one of the most accessible volumes I have found on the neurobiological aspects of ADD. I especially appreciated the chapter on co-occuring conditions. There are many related neurological conditions such as such as depression, anxiety, and autistic spectrum disorders, that combine with ADD to make an individual's situation more complicated than is usually presented in books. My only quarrel with Brown is in his enthusiasm for stimulant medication to the virtual exclusion of other treatments. Stimulant medications can be wonderful when they work. Even when they work however, the person with ADD can benefit from his one designed counseling, training, and treatment. With that caveat, I highly recommend this book.

As a college student who suffers from ADD, I have heard just about every myth you could imagine related to ADD in our popular culture. Professionals and authors I've come across often provide tedious, contradictory opinions, which is why I was so happy to find a book that offers real clarity.

With a combination of rock-solid scientific research and accessible anecdotes, Dr. Brown removes the clutter from understanding the cluttered ADD mind. He debunks myths systematically, and more importantly offers enlightening explanations that can provide real help.

Serious professionals will identify Dr. Brown as an accomplished expert who clearly speaks their language, while those seeking guidance for their own ADD, or for a loved one, will be able to learn a great deal. I am not someone who is majoring in psychology and have only a limited background with the terminology, and I found the book to be written at a level someone of my experience could understand. I would advise those interested in learning about ADD to pick it up and give it careful consideration.

Brown eschews the spate of ADD books that champion the idea 'How wonderful that I have ADD. I'm unique, creative and all I have to do is learn to adapt myself to the world and I will have a great life' hype that sells copies for people with ADD seeking a cure-all. Brown is an empiricist and does not subscribe to anecdotal evidence such as prominent people who have ADD to suggest everyone can. In fact, his sobering view is that the executive functions of the brain are compromised in the ADD mind, and therefore, 'training' is of little use nor are the newer strategies of neurofeedback or exercises that purport to 'balance the cerebellum,' which he likens to trying to treat autism by providing courses in communication skills. Rather, his emphasis is that ADD is a serious disorder, or rather a syndrome since there are many parameters to it, or in other words, many roads that lead to it. On the positive side he denounces the deniers of ADD like scientologists and 'common sense' observations that you just need to give a child some motivation and will power. He believes thus far medication is about the only good treatment, and wryly states stimulants and other medical treatments are fine for 8 out of 10 people with ADD, fine that is, if you happen to be one of the eight. He presents advice to families that has been covered already in much of the literature. While his views are conservative--and he does not discuss various severities of ADD--this is a helpful book if you need a good outline of the available evidence on the subject, and will be a welcome ADDition to your library, particularly if you have been frustrated by the upbeat hype, and begin blaming yourself for not 'getting with the program.' At times, however, he overreaches his thesis, making suggesting that the 'executive functions' in people with ADD are so compromised they are practically hopeless. He does not mention degrees of ADD although he mentions types of ADD. He also does a bit of contradicting by first stating that it is a syndrome with multiple causes but then treats it as though all the variables result in basically the same condition. He also fails to address sufficiently the cultural variable of a world saturated with information that can exacerbate the condition, nor does he mention the idea that ADD may evolve during the lifespan, regardless of medication or behavioral training.

OUTSTANDING BOOK! I recommend this book to EVERYONE interested in the most current information on ADD and ADHD. Dr. Brown uses the term "ADD syndrome" to refer to a cluster of impairments in the management system of the mind. As a female adult with ADD and a high school resource specialist, I have experienced the effects of this syndrome both personally and professionally. As an educator who sees the actions of students with ADD frequently misunderstood by their teachers, I believe the information in this book will make a huge difference for students in the classrooms of the teachers who read it; Dr. Brown explains not only how these impairments affect behavior and time management, but more importantly, how they can affect reading, written expression, math, and memory. As a person with ADD, I especially liked his concept of ADD syndrome. Dr. Brown explains the complexity of this syndrome in an easy to read and easy to understand format. This book is for everyone who has been touched by someone with ADD: parents, friends, spouses, siblings, relatives, teachers, doctors, psychologists, and especially, any person who has ADD.

I found this book informative with very current, new ideas. I knew that ADD ran in our family but after reading this book, I realize that there are manifestations of it that I had never considered ADD. Now I realize that even more of us have this condition. We present with diverse symptoms, abilities and coping strategies but according to this book they are caused by the same types of brain problems. That makes very good sense to me. It explains a great deal. I am 63 years old and have known 6 generations of my family from my great grandfather to my grandchildren. There are some with ADD in each generation. What I used to think of as quirks I now realize are ADD traits. This book has allowed me to be gentler on myself and members of my family. I bought 4 copies of this book and am giving them to family members. I hope that they will find this information as helpful as I have.

Excellent discussion of various facets of ADHD, including executive functions, various attention and processing problems and their effects. This is also one of the best books I've seen explaining the physiology of ADD at cellular level, and details on treatment and medication that I haven't found elsewhere. The text is early college level. It's well written and clear, but it's not fluffy light reading.

This book is excellent and a must-read for any one interested in the effects of ADD on not only learning and academic achievement, but intepersonal dynamics, management of finances, and advancement in the workplace. Rather than providing either excuses or stigmatizing explanations, Brown provides scientific and anecdotal evidence for a complex, neurobehavioral profile of the executive functioning difficulties for those persons with ADD.

As a high school English teacher of some 23 years, I have taught students across a wide range of aptitudes, abilities-- and, as I was reminded in reading Dr. Tom Brown's on Attention Deficit, a wide range of attention characteristics as well. Indeed, to read Dr. Brown's ADD study is to be presented with student attentiveness as a truly independent variable in the calculus of aptitude, ability and performance. Through considering the wealth of case studies of 10-70+ year-olds in this text, teachers will indeed have their eyes opened to many of the operant causes for their students' wide-ranging attentiveness patterns, which are all too easily subsumed in (false) assessments of students' abilities.
Indeed, as Dr. Brown shows in the many examples included in this volume, there
are aspects of the relationship of ADD/ADHD symptoms to writing inefficiencies
that alone make this a worthwhile read. That "working memory" plays a large role
in the essay-writing process should make sense to most teachers of writing, surely, but what even a partial absence of good working memory can mean to the process of sentence sequencing in argumentative writing-- turning this chore into a
mild, or less mild form of torture--is vividly depicted by Dr. Brown, both through case study and cogent analysis.
To read this book with an eye as well to students present and past is indeed an
instructive experience, and one that may (for you as well) be tempered with both
pleasure and regret in remembering students whose occasional hesitations of mind and pen were either accepted as intrinic to performance, or dismissed as laziness
or ineptitude.
After reading this seminal book which, absent of pretense, presents its findings in language both direct and affecting, teachers of reading and writing should indeed feel empowered to be much more nearly the "individual growth specialist" that all students with learning disabilities most need. This is to say that, often enough, the students who exhibit some of the biggest roadblocks to self-expression and written cogency are exactly those who end up having the most trenchant things to say on paper.
Knowing this to be true enough, turning then to Dr. Brown's text should indeed
help English teachers to become much more willing and able to create spaces of
counsel and extra time that will help the ADD/ADHD student to tap further into
his/her intellectual resources with more confidence and stamina. The amount of
sheer good this book is capable of catalyzing in otherwise time-stressed and
grading-beleagured teachers is indeed major, insofar as the extra time and attention the ADD/ADHD student uniquely needs should lead, naturally enough, to good teachers' further personalizing their attention to all their students.
Indeed, Dr. Tom Brown deserves our thanks (and our students', assuredly) for inspiring us to further diversify writing assignments and draft work to more pointedly engage a wider pattern of student attentiveness. It is my fervent hope that many teachers in the writing sector gain access to this very instuctive work.
Bill Hunter
Hamden, CT

This book is one of the top three in my ADHD library, which is rather extensive!

Read the editorial reviews above, from some of the field's top experts, to see how highly Brown's colleagues regard his work and this book.

Having attended Dr. Brown's lectures many times over the years, I was glad to see that this printed presentation is just as engaging and clear as his lectures.

Highly recommended!

Gina Pera

Great book for medical professionals and those who have some background in ADHD. Good for others, but can be a bit more complicated. Personally I found it very informative.