Body Speaks or Attention Deficit Disorder and Learning Disabilities

Body Speaks

Author: James L Griffith

For decades, health care providers have worked as though there were a monolithic wall dividing the ailments of the mind from those of the body. Theorists on either side developed separate languages and philosophies to explain symptoms. This distinction has left many clinicians unable to treat successfully patients whose symptoms—such as headaches, conversion paralysis, and seizures—arise from the place where mind and body meet. In this book, the authors describe a powerful narrative therapy, one that relies on the wisdom and everyday language of patients’ real-life stories instead of the expert knowledge and professional language of the clinician. This approach can be used across all categories of somatic symptoms, from factitious ones to medical illnesses such as asthma or migraine headaches.The authors show how somatic symptoms are often related to unspeakable dilemmas, as in the case of a child who, after discovering a parent’s marital infidelity, is afraid to disclose the secret and begins having blackout spells for which a neurologist can find no physiological basis. These dilemmas can be understood only if a clinician creates the kind of relationship in which privately held stories of fear, shame, and threat can be told safely. Detailed case studies and numerous brief examples vividly illustrate techniques for helping patients escape the dilemmas that bind their bodies by finding new language and stories that can free them.In an innovative section, the authors rethink the current ideas and practices of psychopharmacology. Rather than “treating” a brain disease, a clinician uses medications to recalibrate brain systems that register alarm,thereby opening new possibilities for therapeutic change through speaking, listening, reflecting, and relating.This book offers all clinicians—psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, nurses, physicians, and family therapists—a way to use language to help patients resolve bodily symptoms. It avoids the stigmatization that patients and families so often experience—and the frustration clinicians feel—when struggling to find answers for mind-body problems.

Booknews

The authors show how somatic symptoms are often related to unspeakable dilemmas, which can be understood only if a clinician creates the kind of relationship in which privately held stories of fear, shame, and threat can be told safely. Detailed case studies and numerous brief examples illustrate techniques for helping patients escape the dilemmas that bind their bodies by finding new language and stories that can free them. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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Attention Deficit Disorder and Learning Disabilities: Reality, Myths, and Controversial Treatments

Author: Barbara D Ingersoll

Two experts on these much-misunderstood, debilitating problems explain how parents can spot telltale symptoms and select the best treatment for their children—a practical handbook for parents, teachers, and medical professionals alike.

Table of Contents:

	Authors' Note
	Introduction: Are "Alternative Treatments" Good Alternatives?	1
Ch. 1	What is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?	11
Ch. 2	What Are Learning Disabilities?	41
Ch. 3	How New Treatments Are Evaluated: Science, Pseudoscience, and Quackery	73
Ch. 4	Effective Treatments for ADHD	87
Ch. 5	Effective Treatments for Learning Disabilities	107
Ch. 6	Pills and Potions	121
Ch. 7	Dietary Interventions	149
Ch. 8	Training Approaches to Treatment	171
Ch. 9	Miscellaneous Approaches	199
	Concluding Remarks: Where Do We Go from Here?	209
	References	213
	Addenda	235
	Index	241