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314 reviews for:
Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder
John J. Ratey, Edward M. Hallowell
4.08 AVERAGE
314 reviews for:
Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder
John J. Ratey, Edward M. Hallowell
4.08 AVERAGE
This is a must read for anyone! It has helped me to be more understanding to my loved ones and colleagues with ADD.
"While trying harder helps just about everything, telling someone with ADD to try harder is no more helpful than telling someone who is nearsighted to squint harder. It misse[s] the biological point."
The positive attributes of an ADD personality can come to the fore with the proper treatment, "attributes like creativity, originality, the ability to think outside the box, tenacity and grit, big-heartedness, entrepreneurialism, and humor."
"While trying harder helps just about everything, telling someone with ADD to try harder is no more helpful than telling someone who is nearsighted to squint harder. It misse[s] the biological point."
The positive attributes of an ADD personality can come to the fore with the proper treatment, "attributes like creativity, originality, the ability to think outside the box, tenacity and grit, big-heartedness, entrepreneurialism, and humor."
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
I don't know. Some kind of attention deficit disorder.
informative
slow-paced
Incredible how much this has changed during my lifetime, and how much of myself I see in here despite no diagnosis.
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
It’s weirdly nice to read that my weird coping mechanisms are actually recommended by professionals.
informative
medium-paced
My single biggest problem with this book is that it was last revised in 2011.
I try not to review books based on what I think they should be but as what they are; unfortunately the last 13 years have been so big for ADHD/neurodiversity research & social shifts that the book is very nearly out of date.
Like any good ADHD book it’s slightly repetitive (under the impression that much of the target audience won’t read it straight through) and occasionally stops entirely to give nicely formatted tables or lists. Sometimes the authors succumb to their own desires for Completely Comprehensive Lists and so then we get absurdities like a 100 point list for adult ADHD.
Reading this solidified my belief that I’m not ADHD, all my ADHD traits are more adequately explained by autism & PTSD, but it did have some good tips and tricks for living with ADHD that are useful for autistic ppl as well.
Big minus 1 for talking about a very, very specific subset of comorbidities (anxiety, depression, OCD) and not autism. Autism comes up twice both times in passing. Also for not questioning whether there are 3x as many men with ADHD as women because women are conditioned into suppressing the symptoms and so don’t get referred to a psych in the first place.
A very brief introduction to AD/HD (took me 2 hrs to read via audio), primarily as it pertains to adults. I particularly enjoyed the unique perspectives of the authors, two psychiatrists who also suffer from ADHD. I would have liked to have heard more about the way trauma may affect development of the ADHD brain.
This book was somewhat helpful. A lot of the cases described were presented as stories which made it difficult to quickly find similar symptoms to what I have been experiencing, which is mainly what I was looking for while reading this book. The content is a bit dated, and ADD is now known as ADHD with additional understandings and supports available, but this was a good foundation to get some of the basics.