Vancouver -- Too-early peer orientation is responsible for much of the bullying that is going on. However, Dr. Gabor Mate should be careful about blaming parents for children being targeted by bullies (There Is A Cure For Bullying -- March 21).  

Globe & Mail - When a woman's world comes tumbling down
by Dr. Gabor Maté
Postpartum depression is thought to have been a factor in last Friday's tragedy in which a Toronto woman, clutching her six-month-old baby, threw herself in front of an oncoming subway train. The condition hardly ever extends to such suicidal and murderous despair, but in its common forms it still takes a toll on women's health, family life, and infants' development. Read the rest of this article...

Globe & Mail - A solution to violence is in our hands
by Dr. Gabor Maté
Last week the journal Science reported that in people prone to violence, the portion of the brain responsible for emotional self-regulation appears to be short-circuited. These scientific findings concerning how the brain may malfunction raise questions about our understanding of human behaviour. And they pose a challenge to our fundamental assumptions about education, law and some current child-rearing practices.... Read the rest of this article...

Macleans - On the mean streets
By Jennifer Hunter
At 9:30 a.m., the doctor who runs the clinic is late, as usual. The patients are lined up in the hallway, a narrow passage filled with the nostril-biting scent of stale smoke and sour sweat. Leona, a 33-year-old aboriginal woman whose features are bloated by years of street life, needs a new prescription for methadone. Dennis, a wraith-like 34-year-old with bloodied sores on his sunken face, wants help for his constant weight loss. He has AIDS, suffers from asthma and lives for his daily hits of cocaine. Andrea, 34, a poet with luxurious strawberry-blond hair and a unicorn tattooed on her right shoulder, is perspiring heavily from not having a hit of methadone. The doctor arrives a few minutes later, his curly hair unserved by a comb, his black wool jacket littered with tufts of dog hair from his husky, Rosie. He invites the first patient, Leona, into the tiny clinic. Read the rest of this article...

Globe & Mail - Decoding the Hype
by Dr. Gabor Maté
Looking for genetic cures for disease lets us sidestep the need to tackle the social and environmental causes... Read the rest of this article...

Globe & Mail - Don't Play Solomon with a Baby's Life
by Dr. Gabor Matè
A B.C. court says a 10-month-old must leave her adoptive parents for a father she hasn't seen. Bad move... The decision reflects society's systemic failure to understand a crucial fact, established by decades of research in developmental psychology and neuroscience: Children's emotional experiences during the first years of life decisively influence future psychological health and help shape the very development of the human brain. Read the rest of this article...

Medical Post - Solace for a scattered mind
By Gillian Wansbrough
A doctor hopes to unlock the mysteries behind attention deficit disorder by examining his own history with the condition

"My mother and I had little opportunity for normal mother-infant experiences. These were hardly possible, given the terrible circumstances, her numbed state of mind and having to concentrate her energies on basic survival."

So writes Dr. Gabor Matè of life after being reunited with his mother in 1944, in his new book Scattered Minds: A New Look at the Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder (Knopf Canada).  Read the rest of this article...

Globe & Mail - Helping Mom and Dad Help Johnny
by Krista Foss, Health Reporter

A new book by Canadian author Gabor Maté argues that ADD -- found mainly in children and overwhelmingly in boys -- begins as a parenting problem that morphs into a biochemical one.

This is the story of a boy who didn't get Ritalin.

He was always a busy baby, says his mother Paula Stevens. He crawled before he sat. In school, he was too busy to get down to the business of reading; he was still struggling with simple books at the age of seven.

Being busy got him into trouble with other kids and with teachers. There were subtle hints about the problem from the teachers, a less-subtle package of information from the school guidance counsellor and a best guess from a pediatrician. The headlong rush into a diagnosis began. Read the rest of this article...

Vancouver Sun - New guidelines issued for diagnosing child disorders
By Yvonne Zacharias

You see them in every school -- the class clown, the kid who keeps leaping out of his chair, the student who gets these gusts of manic enthusiasm only to lose interest and tune out altogether.

These could be the symptoms of a perplexing condition called attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which has come under close scrutiny, with prescriptions for Ritalin and other drugs used to control it increasing five-fold in Canada from 1990 to 1997. Read the rest of this article...

Rinfocan - The Management of Attention Deficit Disorder

Pharmacists are in a key position when it comes to the treatment of attention deficit disorder. The usually prescribed medications are somewhat tricky to use. Not a11 physicians are familiar with just how individualized and specific doses and schedules need to be. Patients also need to be counseled about side effects, which is another area sometimes neglected in medical practice. The following is a brief description of ADD and its pharmacological treatment. Read the rest of this article...

How Not To Deal with Hyperactivity
By Dr. Gabor Maté
 
 The report of a  Port Hardy teacher taping a seven-year-old hyperactive boy's head to his desk ought to ring alarm bells about the ill-preparedness of our educational system to cope with the increasing number of children struggling with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and other neuropsychological problems. Read the rest of this article..

New ADD Guidelines helpful, But Not Enough
By Dr. Gabor Maté

The guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics this week for the diagnosis of attention deficit disorder are timely--and, unfortunately, inadequate.  Read the rest of this article..

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