Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Gabor Mate (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Plume (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452279631
• ASIN: B002NPCSDC
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,724,371 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gabor Maté, MD, is a physician, author, seminar leader, and acclaimed public speaker. His bestselling books include Scattered, When the Body Says No, and Hold onto Your Kids. A former medical columnist for The Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail, he lives in Vancouver, BC.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

120 of 125 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Merlin:"The best thing for being sad is to learn something.", February 11, 2002

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C. Sullivan "bookaholic" (Howardsville, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates And What You Can Do About It (Paperback)

Having been in therapy longer than Woody Allen, I practice what Karl Menninger called `bibliotherapy'-i.e., reading widely and deeply in the field of mental or emotional disorders. Since I'm a voracious reader, and since I've been doing this for twenty years, I sometimes feel there isn't much left for a layman to learn, or at least nothing much that could be called new. But Dr. Mate's book is wonderfully helpful on two fronts: first, it is a "why-you-or-your -child-are-like-this" book, and second, it is a "and-here-is-what-you-can-do-to-allieviate-the-condition"book. Not cure it, mind you, just make the cards you drew a little easier to play.

On the first front, the neurobiology of ADD, Dr. Mate makes his point conclusively: this disorder arises first in the infant, in how he or she is wired-or not-and it occurs in the make-up of the hypersensitive baby, highly aware and from the very beginning suffering at the smallest slings and arrows life offers. Resilient children roll with the punches; ADD kids are flattened by them and get back up more slowly. Momma used to call this type "high-strung" and, boy, was she ever right. Dr. Mate even points out a study done on the vagus nerve of five-month old babies that turns out to be highly predictive of which of them will later, at fourteen months, prove to be "more reactive to maternal separation." In other words, ADD could as well serve as an acronym for Attachment Deficit Disorder. People who are hypersensitive have a disordered attachment to their caretakers that is pre-verbal and pervasive. One had better learn to deal with the fact that the fault is mainly synpatical, not social. My family doctor told me that my then-nine-year-old son suffered from severe separation anxiety because he hadn't been in pre-school or away from his parents enough. Fortunately, a more knowledgeable child psychiatrist said it was inborn so we could relax and quit blaming ourselves. Whew....

That doesn't mean that experiencing this hypersensitivity isn't damaging, even with a more-than-good-enough mother. Or that nurturing a hypersensitive child is easy. It is much more tiring and trying to deal with the ADD child than it is with his or her more resilient sibling.The ADD child triggers anxiety in even the most competent parent. So, it is on the second front, the practical things to do, that this book is most helpful, even hopeful. I return to it again and again (that is, when I haven't mislaid it in one of my more driven ADD moments) to remind myself what to do and what not to do to help myself and my similarly-wired son. For instance, the section on the counter-will-an idea I'd not heard before-made me understand why I am more often than not so suspicious of authority figures. I used to think it was very adolescent of me, and now Dr. Mate tells me it is, and that this is a component of ADD. It was from this notion of a counter-will that I began my search on ways to strengthen the will itself, so as to disengage this adversarial part of me, the counter-will, that aspect of us that doesn't trust. It has been an interesting and fruitful search and I am grateful to Dr. Mate for giving me new ways to think about this way of being in the world.

By the time the ADD child arrives at school, the disconnectedness is ingrained. We are attuned to every slight, intended or not. Other kids find ADDers just as trying as the grown-ups do-it takes a lot of energy to interact with a `wild child' who hogs the teacher's attention or a distracted one whose hypersensitivity presents the perfect opportunity to torture for fun and profit. I've yet to find an ADD adult who liked the social aspects of school, or didn't have horror stories about cruel peers and teachers...

The most important chapters for me have been the ones on medication and on self-parenting. The first, medication, gives the limits of pharmocological help for this disorder. It is very clear about what medicine can and cannot do and the importance of finding a knowledgeable physician. The second, self-parenting, seems like a Mobius strip until Dr. Mate takes apart the results of life-time conditioning and explains the qualities one needs-compassion for self and others, curiosity rather than blame or judgment-in order to embark on a course of change. Whether one has to structure things by herself, or has the good fortune to find competent professional help, Dr. Mate's book is of inestimable help on that journey.

In fact, every time my ADD tendencies pop up and I lose my copy of Scattered, I buy another. And now that my stepson has been diagnosed with ADD, I have an extra copy or two to give his suffering parents, though I would not be without this book.

Scattered is definitely a keeper.

100 of 108 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Is Scattered half-full, or half-empty?, April 28, 2001

By 

Ronald L. Mcgowan "EltonRon" (Burbank, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates And What You Can Do About It (Paperback)

I must say that my opinion regarding Dr. Mate's "Scattered" is... well... "Scattered!" On the one hand, it contains some of the most eloquently poetic descriptions of A.D.D. I've ever seen (some of which come directly from Dr. Mate's patients). One need look no further than the chapter headings to see how beautifully the ambiguity of poetry describes the A.D.D.experience- headings like "So Much Soup and Garbage Can," "Forgetting to Remember the Future," "A Surrealistic Choreography," "Severed Thoughts and Flibbertigibbets," and "My Marshmallow Caught Fire." In fact, on page 43, Dr. Mate offers one of the most poignant metaphors for A.D.D. I've read, in his description of the trees on the shores of Vancouver Island. Passages like this one make "Scattered" a worthwhile book to own, and I've recommended it highly to several people on that basis alone. But while "Scattered" delivers in grand style on the promise of the first part of its title (i.e. "How A.D.D. Originates"), it fails to deliver consistently on the promise of its second (i.e. "What You Can Do About It"). This unrealized expectation is established by the last sentence of the very same page referenced above (p.43), which reads: "Fortunately, as we will see when we come to the chapters on the healing process in ADD, neurological and psychological maturation can take place at any time during the life cycle, even in late adulthood." As well-established as the author's intentions are for the remainder of the book, what unfortunately follows is heavily and disproportionately weighted more towards offering specific advice to parents of A.D.D. children than towards offering practical solutions for the A.D.D. adult. In my opinion, Dr. Mate's message would have been far better-served by either: 1. Presenting the material in a more cohesive and balanced fashion or, 2. Presenting the material through two different books, each geared towards a separate audience.

It's not that the information itself is uninteresting or irrelevant, but that Dr. Mate so radically changes the focus of the discussion from addressing the needs of adults in general (Chapters 1 - 15) to exclusively addressing the needs of parents of A.D.D. children in particular (Chapters 16 - 24). The experience is not unlike someone at a party (who happens to have kids) speaking to you directly and then suddenly, without warning, turning their complete attention towards starting up a fresh conversation with someone else about mutual issues involving their children. This of course leaves you standing alone with a drink in your hand, anxiously waiting for the tray of finger sandwiches to make another round, while you wait for your former conversation partner to return and resume the discussion with you.

When the author does finally broaden his scope to once again include a general adult audience (Chapter 25), he does so not by fulfilling the promise of "What You Can Do About It" for the A.D.D. adult (as he had in the previous section for parents), but by returning yet again to descriptions regarding the origins and nature of A.D.D., thus moving the focus back onto the first portion of the title. In fact, the "What You Can Do About it" section for Adult A.D.D. that eventually appears is limited to a mere 23 pages (in a book containing a total of 323)! I find particularly significant that while part V is entitled "The ADD Child and Healing," (indicating practical solutions for parents to healing the A.D.D. child), part VI is simply entitled "The ADD Adult."

Adding to the level of frustration, these long-anticipated (though brief) 23 pages of practical solutions for the A.D.D. adult are joltingly interrupted by a very short chapter describing the relationship between the A.D.D. brain and addictions, once again describing the origins of the condition rather than offering solutions to it. Again, it is not the information itself (which is all certainly valuable), but the sometimes exclusionary way in which the information is presented, that I find to be most frustrating.

If you are looking for poignant and poetic descriptions of the A.D.D. experience, then I highly recommend "Scattered." However, if you want a more balanced presentation of a variety of theories regarding the origins of A.D.D., as well as practical solutions geared towards the A.D.D. adult in particular, then I recommend "Out of the Fog," by Kevin Murphy and Suzanne Levert as a better choice.

Dr. Mate is an extremely articulate writer, and his book is a worthy addition to any library of A.D.D. material. But from the standpoint of practical solutions, "Scattered" loses focus mid-way through, in that it attempts to address the needs of far-too-wide of an audience, thereby not only diluting the impact of its message, but also excluding a significant portion of readers in the process.

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Applauding Gabor Mate, May 29, 2000

By 

M.Burke LCSW (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scattered: How A.D.D. Originates and What You Can Do (Hardcover)

I applaud Gabor Mate for the remarkable contribution he has made to the literature on Attention Deficit Disorder in his book Scattered. Due to both personal and professional interest, I have read and recommended many books and articles on this topic. I find that Scattered has become the first book I recommend to colleagues, clients and anyone interested in learning about, or ruling out ADD. Feedback is consistent with my own reaction--this is a comprehensive and insightful book--an easy, informative, valuable, read for professional and lay people. The role of biology/nature is described so well that the non-scientific reader gains a new level of understanding. When it comes to the role of nurture/environment--Mate truly shines-- capturing the experience of ADD with an insiders wisdom and a refreshing openess, bringing the reader understanding, comfort, hope and pathways to healing. The material on parenting (ADD and the child) is excellent---could be part of a parenting handbook. His writing on change and growth and his understanding of what causes adults to struggle have value across the board --whatever the issues are. One does not have to have, or work with ADD to enjoy and benefit from Scattered.