AMY GOODMAN: You were born in Nazi-occupied Hungary?
DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, ADD has a lot to do with that. I have attention deficit disorder myself. And again, most people see it as a genetic problem. I don’t. It actually has to do with those factors of brain development, which in my case occurred as a Jewish infant under Nazi occupation in the ghetto of Budapest. And the day after the pediatrician — sorry, the day after the Nazis marched into Budapest in March of 1944, my mother called the pediatrician and says, “Would you please come and see my son, because he’s crying all the time?” And the pediatrician says, “Of course I’ll come. But I should tell you, all my Jewish babies are crying.”
Now infants don’t know anything about Nazis and genocide or war or Hitler. They’re picking up on the stresses of their parents. And, of course, my mother was an intensely stressed person, her husband being away in forced labor, her parents shortly thereafter being departed and killed in Auschwitz. Under those conditions, I don’t have the kind of conditions that I need for the proper development of my brain circuits. And particularly, how does an infant deal with that much stress? By tuning it out. That’s the only way the brain can deal with it. And when you do that, that becomes programmed into the brain.
And so, if you look at the preponderance of ADD in North America now and the three millions of kids in the States that are on stimulant medication and the half-a-million who are on anti-psychotics, what they’re really exhibiting is the effects of extreme stress, increasing stress in our society, on the parenting environment. Not bad parenting. Extremely stressed parenting, because of social and economic conditions. And that’s why we’re seeing such a preponderance.
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AMY GOODMAN: How do you think kids with ADD, with attention deficit disorder, should be treated?
DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, if we recognize that it’s not a disease and it’s not genetic, but it’s a problem of brain development, and knowing the good news, fortunately — and this is also true for addicts — that the brain, the human brain, can develop new circuits even later on in life — and that’s called neuroplasticity, the capacity of the brain to be molded by new experience later in life — then the question becomes not of how to regulate and control symptoms, but how do you promote development. And that has to do with providing kids with the kind of environment and nurturing that they need so that those circuits can develop later on.
Thank god for people like Dr Mate, because when I was researching this paper I did, I came to the conclusion that a high proportion of experts in paediatric psychology are in fact functioning sociopaths.
The human brain is just a slab of meat for these people, best washed down with a nice Chianti.
People like Russell Barkley, acknowledged expert in the field:
Dr. Barkley has spent his entire professional career in clinical psychology and clinical neuropsychology studying ADHD and its diagnosis, assessment, and management. Among the treatments he has studied or written about [i.e. pushed] have been the stimulant medications, such as methylphenidate (brand names of Ritalin ® , Ritalin SR ® , Ritalin LA ®, Focalin ®, Focalin XR ®, Concerta ®, and Metadate CD ®), the amphetamines (brand names of Adderall ®, Adderall XR ®, Dexedrine ®), and pemoline (Cylert ®). He has also studied and written about the non stimulants, such as atomoxetine (brand name Strattera ®).
Barkley wrote Attention Deficit Hyperactivitv Disorder: A handbook for diagnosis and treatment, wherein he positively gloats that the APA-drug industry hegemony has gained ground internationally simply because of internet advocacy by parent-advocacy groups such as CHADD, which in the early 90s alone received received over $775,000 from Ciba-Geigy, manufacturer of Ritalin ®. (Prior to this internet advocacy, the rest of the world outside North America used WHO's diagnostic standards for "hyperkinetic disorder" - not great, but far more rigorous than those of the APA).
How telling that a supposedly objective scientist, with lots of apparently consequential (but diagnostically useless) brain scans to show as 'proof' of ADHD, should ultimately rely upon internet memetics to prove the case for his pharmacological solution to the disorder.
Barkley and like-minded colleagues are little more than tenured drug-pushers. Highly aggressive ones at that. He and 70 other drug-industry-funded colleagues published a 'Consensus statement' on the disorder concluding that:
To publish stories that ADHD is a fictitious disorder or merely a conflict between today’s Huckleberry Finns and their caregivers is tantamount to declaring the earth flat, the laws of gravity debatable, and the periodic table in chemistry a fraud.
