Rating: 
Summary: Addresses the underlying dangers of this popular drug
Review: Dr. Breggin's Talking Back To Ritalin addresses the underlying dangers of this popular drug, examining issues raised by Ritalin and stimulants and ADHD in general. This appears in a revised edition, adding new research findings and facts.
Rating:
Summary: Sorry, but I have to agree.
Review: For the reviewer who is talking back to Peter Breggin, I'm sorry to say that I have to agree with him. It used to be that Ritalin was practically unheard of, but now the number of children taking it has increased fivefold over the last five years, and if ADHD were a "disease", just like cancer or diabetes, as psychiatrists like to claim, then we wouldn't be seeing an increase in children being labeled with this disorder.Furthermore, I see nothing wrong with trying alternatives to Ritalin. Many parents with children labeled ADHD have looked for allergies and other physical conditions, such as thyroid problems, and have found them. Many other parents have changed their child's diet to one that is low in sugar, and that has also worked wonders. Still other children may be having trouble at home, such as parents going through a divorce, or a new baby in the family. Stress impacts greatly on the lives of children. I'm not blaming the parents for anything, I'm just stating the facts. Granted, there are children who are troubled despite the fact that everything seems to be okay in their lives, but I really believe that this is the exception, not the rule, and that children often begin acting out when they have stressors at home and/or at school. Parents need to be informed and keep an open mind, and identify possible physical conditions or stressors in their child's life before giving their children stimulants. To so hastily prescribe Ritalin before looking for other causes of hyperactivity and telling the parents what THEY want to hear to make money is a grave disservice to our children, and most definitely a cause for concern in our society, as children are our future. If you like facts, I'll state one: children who were prescribed Ritalin in childhood are three times more likely to use cocaine later in life. Don't try to tell me that this is because their "biochemically defective brains" cause them to make bad choices and use drugs. I don't buy it. And I also don't buy that you don't seem to think that ADHD children are our "best and our brightest", as Peter Breggin believes. I have actually found data that says that ADHD tends to disappear once the child is past school age, and that many of these children tend to do well as artisans or at other jobs where they work "on their feet" when they grow up. Albert Einstein is thought to have had ADHD, and a teacher once wrote on his report card, "You'll never amount to anything." What if Einstein had taken Ritalin? Would he have reached his full potential with his brilliant mind altered by speed? I doubt it. When I was about ten, my mother took me to a psychotherapist because I was fidgety and nervous in school, and I would come home in tears nearly every day. Some of my classmates were picking on me, and school had become a hellhole for me as a result of their torments. I was also often fidgety and emotional at home as well. The therapist told my mother to try changing my diet, and in the meantime, he talked to me about my problems with the children at school picking on me, and he also talked about a past issue that still bothered me: I was sexually molested at the age of nine by a neighbor, and had been afraid to tell anyone. Needless to say, changing my diet and getting to the root of my problems took some time, but I greatly improved. That was 1988. What would happen to me eleven years later in 1999 if I was a child and I walked into a psychologist's office? He would probably refer me to a psychiatrist, who would prescribe me speed and fifteen minutes a week to monitor the speed. Meanwhile, he would feed my parents the unproven myth that I had a "biochemical imbalance" or "crossed wires". I find it very insulting to find that a doctor would see my reactions in childhood to stressful events and my personality in general as nothing more than a "diseased brain". And that's what we have turned to, and its really sad. Oh, and for your information, New England, I turned out pretty well, I believe, despite the fact that I didn't get the stimulant drugs that NAMI members and psychiatrists today would say that I needed back then. I'm not rich and famous or anything, but I work, I go to college, I'm married, I have lots of good friends, and I plan to have a baby next year. I have never been in trouble with the law, and I don't intend to ever be. Not bad for someone who a doctor would call "defective". Oh, sitting still is still a bit difficult for me, and I'm definitely sometimes what you could call "hyper", but I don't necessarily see that as a defect. I see that as the way that I am. Some people are less excitable and can tolerate sitting still; others are not. Here's another fact: the U.S. makes and consumes 90% of the world's Ritalin. If it were true that "untreated" ADHD led to kids committing crimes, then we'd see a rash of crimes in other countries that don't use Ritalin. Obviously, the pill solution isn't working, because plenty of kids in this country are shooting their classmates and planting bombs in schools. You don't see this in other countries. In two of the school shootings in recent years, the shooter was taking a mind-altering drug. Who's to say that the drug didn't contribute to the teens' behavior and make them violence-prone? Dr. Breggin, you are right. This IS a cause for concern. Too many kids are being given stimulants, and increasingly, Prozac and other mind-altering drugs. Will we win the war on Joe Camel only to find that Mr. Prozac has taken his place? Just because a drug is prescribed by a doctor doesn't mean that it's the right course of action to take. And Dr. Breggin, you have done a great thing for our youth by writing this book. You have done no harm. The doctors doing harm are the ones that are handing out pills like candy to kids, and saying to the parents, "Oh, it doesn't matter if your child goes to three different sitters and you drink like a fish and his father never spends time with him; its all his broken brain's fault." THESE are the doctors that have violated the sacred oath.
Rating: 
Summary: The Importance of Critical Thinking
Review: I agree with the reviewer who says you should check out the quackwatch website, where you can find a lot of interesting information about the book and the author, in addition to a critical review written by Dr. Russell Barkley, a leading expert on ADD/ADHD. For instance, according to the website, judges found Peter Breggin untrustworthy and incompetent as an expert witness in three of the legal cases that he mentions in the introduction (some cases were dismissed and others were withdrawn before the publication of this book, though, interestingly, Breggin does not mention the fact). One of the judges even states that he believes he can almost declare Breggin "a fraud" who has written "outrageous books" and made "outrageous statements" despite the fact that he (Breggin) is "untrained" and has no academic competence/credential. Now, itÕs good to be skeptical and critical when it comes to health science. You should examine any claim rigorously, including those made by pharmaceutical companies, major medical associations and research institutions. But please use the same standard to judge all claims, including those made by Breggin in this book. You owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and other ADD sufferers. Instead of this book, I recommend Driven to Distraction by Hallowell and Ratey. They are not only competent doctors with the proper credentials but also fellow ADDers.
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Summary: Let psychiatry rebut this point for point
Review: I am a licensed clinical social worker with seven years' experience working with troubled children, and am now director of a large therapeutic foster care program. From my practical experience, and from my reading, the negative reviews of this book, calling Breggin unscientific, ranting, etc. have got it exactly wrong. The "literature" supporting Ritalin and other stimulants is biased and only intermittently scientific - more like ad copy than fact. It is easy to see why stimulants dominate the treatment of ADHD. Drug companies spend over $20 billion a year on promotion - more than they spend on research.What does this money buy them? David Healy, internationally known psychiatric researcher and writer, claims about 50 percent of all psychiatric journal articles are ghost written by employees of drug companies, and that 30% of The American Psychiatric Association's income comes from drug company subsidies, grants and advertising. Around 70 percent of all drug research is funded by the drug companies themselves, and most of the rest, funded by the government, is heavily influenced by drug companies' extensive lobbying machinery. Major journals (including The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet) have lamented the control of research and publishing by drug company money: The New England Journal of Medicine editorialized, stating they could hardly find reviewers for their psychiatric drug articles who did not have conflicts of interest due to financial ties with drug companies. Studies funded by drug companies, that don't support the companies' drugs, are rarely published. The bottom line: professionals and the public are bombarded with a stream of "research" and "information" financed and spun by the people who make and sell these drugs. The conflict of interest is palpable. Many people lack access to effective non-drug ways to deal with "ADHD." But this is no proof that the drugs are especially effective and safe - it just shows the advantage of having billions of dollars to finance and promote the drugs. I have a challenge for readers who dismiss Breggin's book: Read half a dozen responsible critiques of biopsychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Try David Healy's The Creation of Psychopharmacology, also Healy's Let Them Eat Prozac (soon to come out in the U.S.), Robert Whitaker's Mad in America, Glenmullen's Prozac Backlash, Fisher and Greenberg's From Placebo to Panacea - Putting Psychiatric Drugs to the Test, and Elliott Valenstein's Blaming the Brain - The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health. These are not works by new agers who think crystals heal schizophrenia. They are by respected academics, researchers and clinicians (and not all of them, especially Healy and Glenmullen, are against psychiatric drugs). But read these books, and note the claims and evidence they cite about the drugs. Now, here's the challenge: look in mainstream psychiatric literature for any serious attempt to address these claims. I've read over forty books, pro and con, on psychiatric drugs - and I've yet to find pro-drug literature that addresses 98% of these arguments, not in general, and not point by point. This is a matter of informed consent. See if Peter Breggin's words in Toxic Psychiatry are not at least very plausible: "In the world of modern psychiatry claims can become truth, hopes can become achievements and propaganda is taken as science". Yes, Breggin is angry. He pulls no punches and gives no quarter. But he deserves serious consideration - he has been qualified as an expert witness in numerous product liability cases against drug companies around the country. Try to find, anywhere, point by point refutations of the specific claims he makes in this book. Except for a few points, biopsychiatry's silence on Breggin's claims is deafening. Ask an "authority" on ADHD whether, as Breggin claims, the pannel of experts at the NIH Consensus Conference on ADHD DID or DID NOT conclude in their final report, "..there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction," and ask the "authority" who it was that later took it upon himself to edit that statement to muddle the wording, but without changing its bottom line. And ask if it is true that the conference organizer, Peter Jensen, later admitted in a 2000 article that the experts at this conference found NO proof that "ADHD reflects a disordered state."(See Breggin, page 16). If, after looking into the issue, you decide to give your child Ritalin, so be it. But each parent, child and professional deserves to know the whole story - something you will not get reading standard psychiatric literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Misleading and Biased
Review: I give this book two stars, even though it's not very scientific in its approach (using lots of statistical tricks and skews to aid its cause).
Parents, don't let this book scare you away from ADHD medications:
I was a B student and chronic underachiever until I started ADHD medication in college--my grades and academic enthusiasm immediately took off, and I'm headed for an Ivy league graduate program next year. I also became more socially conscious and cooperative--this fact stands in stark contrast to everything Dr. Breggin has to say. I haven't seen any deterioration in cognitive function--in fact, I would say that my critical thinking skills have vastly improved. My general hypothesis on ADHD (as if you care) is that the human brain is meant for much more excitement and arousal than the bureacratic drudgeries of contemporary society can offer. We have the chemicals in our brain to relay such coarse messages such as "kill animal" and "run from animal." The ADHD "sufferer" is merely looking for this excitement, and stimulants provide it, so we can sit still.
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Summary: Dr. Breggin Exposes Potential Liability in Pediatric Drugs
Review: I read both the original and the revised versions of "Talking Back to Ritalin" by Dr. Peter Breggin. I read them from the standpoint of a parent, an attorney, a consumer advocate, and a U.N. children's human rights activist. I compare these two books to the advanced thinking about the links between manipulated cigarettes and cancer. For example, anyone who has read Dr. David Kessler's "A Question of Intent" on the connection between the tobacco industry, consumer misrepresentation, and big politics, knows that the pharmaceutical industry is dwarfing the successes the tobacco industry enjoyed for so long using the same m.o. Anyone who has followed the number of FDA-approved medications being pulled from the shelves over the past decades knows that only a qualified expert can properly attack the scientific crisis in critical inquiry that should have occurred at the clinical trial stage but did not. Dr. Breggin's expertise demonstrates, in consumer-friendly terms, the lack of scientific inquiry presented by some pharmaceutical companies and the prescribing doctors they solicit. In trumpeting the ADHD medications for our most vulnerable consumers based on a flimsy symptom list, these manufacturers have snuck their way past the clinical trial stage to market products to doctors, teachers and parents without incuding in their marketing literature that "death" is now a FDA MEDWATCH-recorded adverse reaction. Every law school with a course on Products Liability owes it to their students to assign this book as an introduction to an area of emerging, explosive tort litigation. An Amazon book review, however, is hardly the place to provide a substitute warning label for the ADHD-drug manufacturers' failure to do so.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent! - Thorough and well reasoned argument
Review: I think this book is one of the best researched in the alternative view about drugs. It gives well reasoned arguments that aught to give pause for the knee jerk phenemoma that is going on with Stimulant drugs and our youth.
Yes Dr. Breggin is thoroughly biased, but that is a given for all human beings. Being biased in itself is not a bad thing, because it often is simply the expression of passion and certainty. Bias is a problem when there are no clear arguments or good reason to support the bias. Dr. Breggin is always quite thorough in supporting his point of view.
To be fair, he gives almost no credibility to the opposite view. Since I happen to mostly share his bias, it is not something I have a problem with.
While it is apparent that for many children, stimulant medications have effects and do help, the question is really about the cost of that help for the long term. Should we be using these drugs as the first and often only solution? If we can help these kids without resorting to drugs, wouldn't that be best? Once that diagnosis is surrendered to along with a lifetime of stimulant medications, is that the best option? That is what Breggin is getting at here, are we really looking at this thoroughly or simply swallowing what we are told?
I'm biased against the drugs because I've been successfully treating adults and children with ADD, ADHD, OCD, etc with homeopathic medicine for several years now. Many of my collegues in homeoapthy report similar success.
There is a good book out called "Ritalin Free Kids" By the Ullman's that goes into some depth about homeopathy - one of the best solutions for ADD, ADHD, etc. The book, "Impossible Cure" (Amy Lansky), is also a wonderful primer for those interested in researching homeopathy.
The only dissappointment I have for Breggins' books in general, is he is simply not thorough enough for my tastes in talking about solutions. There are many kids who have VERY disturbing problems in this spectrum, and some of his solutions are too simplistic and not realistic. It is with some of these extreme cases that we see homeopathy really shine, in a way that drugs can't match. There must be other alternative methods as well that really work. So that is my only concern with this book, lack of research into alternative solutions.
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Summary: What the drug companies never tell you
Review: If you are a parent with a "difficult" child, chances are you have seen pamphlets in your doctor's office on ADHD. These reassuring documents tell you that the drugs will transform your child, and assure you that they are safe and effective. Turn the pamphlets over, however, and you'll see that they are printed by the drug companies. Visit the CHADD (the big ADHD support group)web site and you'll see the same info. Don't worry, they tell you -- your child has a "neurobiological disorder" and none of it is your fault or the child's fault. Dig around in their site and you might notice a mention at the bottom of their annual report page that they receive funding from the drug companies. Oh... I'd like to believe this happy information. But these mainstream sources never seem to address in any depth at all the questions that naturally arise: what is the long term effect of keeping your child on the equivalent of speed for several years? How do children feel about being labeled disordered, and about solving their problems with pills? Doesn't that cause damage in itself? What studies have been done to see if kids on these drugs are more likely to become addicted to drugs later in life? How much testing has been done on young children? What is the plan for getting a child off the drugs and teaching them to cope with their "disorder"? Or can they expect to spend all their lives on stimulants? All of these are answered -- if they are addressed at all -- with brief reassurances that there is no need to worry. These are powerful drugs that are restricted and monitored by the government. I need more than glib reassurances before I will put my child on them. This book looks at all the unattractive aspects of these drugs that CHADD and the "experts" brush off so lightly. Anyone can manipulate data, but Breggin quotes time and again from the pro-drug scientists' own studies to show the lack of hard evidence that the drugs work over time, that they are safe, and even that ADHD exists as a disease. He uses their own words to make his point. As a reasonably intelligent reader, I know Breggin is making an argument for his own point of view, and thus has a bias. But I am more likely to trust the document that tackles the tough questions than the ones that pretend they don't even exist.
This book certainly does not have all the answers. It does not offer a real way to handle these kids, (beyond "fix the schools, and give them love and attention"). But it takes a well-documented and convincing look at the frighteningly flimsy basis for the mass drugging of children.
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Summary: Totally Wrong and Unconcerned with Actual Patients
Review: The material in this book is not supported by my ten years of firsthand experience with ADHD. Ritalin is an essential treatment for managing this condition. Abstract statements about the larger society are fine for books and talk shows, but what about the daily lived experience of people suffering from this condition? I don't think Breggin is very much concerned with actual patients.
Rating:
Summary: Almost perfect...
Review: This book records what I have guessed for the past 9 years in my career in the mental health field: that stimulants do not help children in the long run. Yes, a few children may be helped enough by it--often by its placebo effects on the teachers, parents, and children themselves--but most children do not benefit academically at all. Furthermore, I have seen droves of children who entered the pharmacological factory as 5 or 6 year olds, only to continue in it for 10 plus years, having had so many drugs in their system that the drugs no longer touch them. Whereas they were once little hyperactive "monsters", now they are big hyperactive "monsters". Ritalin and other medications allowed the parents and teachers to skate along happily for years, while totally ignoring the underlying issues. Nothing has been done except to create a culture of children who believe that their brains are screwed up and that drugs are the answer. A recipe for disaster. And I'm seeing it simmering. I applaud Dr. Breggin for his work. He tolerates a great deal of ridicule for his position, as do those who come to similar conclusions. His writing can be a bit simplistic and propaganda-like, but so is all of the opposition's. I look forward to more research from scientists who don't have the bias that so many have now. I doubt it will happen; the drug culture has sciece by the balls...
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