Brainstorms: Understanding And Treating Emotional Storms Of ADHD From Childhood Through Adulthood

Brainstorms: Understanding and Treating Emotional Storms of ADHD from Childhood through Adulthood

ReviewIlluminating, comprehensive, and delightfully written, Brainstorms offers a fresh perspective on ADHD and related disorders. Dr. Horacek addresses their baffling emotional component, recognizing the need for paradigm shifts and an effective reframe for behavior. He simplifies brain chemistry and medication, and arms clinicians with the kinds of understanding that will help them solve the riddle of the complex neurology and psychology governing these syndromes. -- Eduardo M. Bustamante, Ph.D.Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has become one of the fashionable psychiatric diagnoses of the 1990s. This book, authoritative, engaging, and often entertaining, explains the clinical presentations of ADHD and effortlessly guides readers to an understanding of their underlying neuroanatomy and rational pharmacology. Dr. Horacek's stated goal is to help us 'better understand the emotional storms that blow through the brains and souls of the people [we] love,' and he has succeeded admirably. His insights will serve as an invaluable resource for parents, teachers, educators, and psychotherapists. -- Anthony LaBruzza M.D.Neurophysiologic disorders that impair normal learning as well as social and emotional development afflict at least 5-8 percent of the school-aged children in this country. Significant symptoms often persist into adulthood and many people struggle for a lifetime, never understanding what continues to hamper their functioning. Brainstorms examines questions surrounding the possible neurobiological underpinnings of the emotionally hyperactive and hyperreactive components of ADHD and related disorders. These 'pre-psychological' substrata may, for example, be fundamental to what we think of as temperament. Here is where the regulation of selective attention and the filtration of noise reside, along with the neurosystems behind energy, sleep/wakefulness, and emotional intensity.The 'firecracker temperament' often associated with certain subtypes of ADHD is quick to heat up and just as quick to cool down. Episodes of dyscontrol, involving anger or any other strong emotion, can present the most challenging aspects of managing ADHD in people of all ages; on the other hand, what takes shape in one person as a handicap may be a welcome burst of creativity and inspired vision in others-such as Mozart, Edison, Hemingway. Exploration of the many paradoxes of these brainstorms is the business of Dr. Horacek's very different, very necessary book.About the AuthorH. Joseph Horacek, Jr., M.D. , is president and medical director of the Center for Neurological Health in Learning in Charlotte, North Carolina.