Things are heating up around here. Our books finally arrived and can now be bought right here on our website, as well as on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. On November 3^rd I’ll be speaking at the Manhattan CHADD about my book and about the group therapy program we’ll be launching early next year in a talk entitled Re-Wiring Your Brain: Improving Focus and Functioning in Adults with ADHD and Depression.

In the meantime, I’ve retained Kirsten Ringer, of KLR Literary to help us with marketing, PR and event planning. With any luck you will see us (my daughter Abby and some of her friends) handing out flyers and palm cards at the ING marathon on November 2^nd as it runs through Williamsburg and past our offices on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint. We’re also planning a book party somewhere in Williamsburg in mid December. Stay tuned for details.

Last week, my trusty executive factotum, Lee, and I pre-recorded a podcast of my CHADD talk, which is posted here. Keep checking in. I’ll be blogging and posting articles with increasing frequency. Write me with questions or suggestions for topics and I’ll get right back.

As ever, our goal in publicizing Getting Unstuck is the gradual launch of our new, innovative group therapy program. We are looking for 20 -30 individuals who are interested in a skills based experiential introduction to using meditation, self hypnosis and guided visualization to heal the effects of childhood traumas and to release the innate ability of the mind to train the brain.

These groups are insurance reimbursable and will include medication evaluation and maintenance. Each will be co-led by another therapist who will be available to continue the group after the initial ten-week period, if so desired.

I continue to believe that there is a great, unmet public health need for a reproducible therapeutic curriculum that addresses the often intertwined strands of depression, attention and trauma. Both attention and trauma are best addressed when they are understood in terms of the brain’s ever constant self-wiring. Depression and other related neurotransmitter disorders can be seen as metabolic brain illnesses that interfere with our ability to master and guide that wiring process.

Anyone wandering into theattentiondoctor.com of late may have noticed a hiatus in postings. This reflects the difficulty of coordinating editors, designers and printers towards the actual publication and sale on this site of my book Getting Unstuck. We have an official publication date of October 15th, and we hope to have books for sale here by the middle of September.

The State of Psychiatry In America Today

When I think about the state of psychiatry in America, I'm reminded of Charles Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities, which begins "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." Never before have we had better, or more specific medicines, and never before have we had so many specific and proven psychotherapies. Yet never before has good psychiatric care been so difficult to obtain for the overwhelming majority of working Americans. There are nowhere near enough psychiatrists, and precious few of the ones we have are trained, or even interested, in providing care that is medical, psychotherapeutic and educational all at the same time. Unfortunately for the patient with complex psychiatric and psychological problems, this is exactly the kind of treatment that is required.

3 Reasons Why People Come

Typically, it is people with treatment-resistant depression who seek help from psychiatrists. They'll go to their general practitioner first, but if that doesn't work, finding a psychiatrist is their next step. In practice, the overwhelming majority of such patients have one or more of three problems: panic, ADD or bipolarism. In my view these are three conditions that scream out for an integrated approach that includes medical, psychotherapeutic and educational components, but few can find it.

This site and my book are part of my wish to address this mismatch between the mental health needs of Americans and the responses of the mental health establishment. As part of this effort, I'm offering a group therapy program that uses an integrated approach to help participants get back to fully enjoying life. We expect to begin this program in mid-January, 2009. If you think this program may be of interest to you, please sign up for our mailing list to keep apprised of details.

In the coming weeks I will write and post articles here, in which I share more details concerning my current thinking about the relationship between depression, ADD, and trauma, and how to approach each of these problems.

Thanks for stopping by.

Its been a busy few weeks here at theattentiondoctor.com; On Thursday the 10th of January I spoke to about a hundred people at the Manhattan Adult ADD support group. Although I gave a number of presentations on ADD and Hypnosis in the mid 90's, its been about ten years since I've talked about my work in a group setting. Many of those attending seems very interested in my take on the interaction of mood and trauma with underlying attentional disorders, and there was a robust question and answer period following the talk. Both the talk and the questions that followed are available for downloads, here: Part 1 and Part 2.

thanks to all of you who attended and to the many of you that called afterwards. If we havent gotten back to you please try again;we get swamped

You may have read an article this week in the NY Times about how drug companies systematically over-estimate the efficacy of their antidepressant drugs by declining to publish/report research studies that do not support them. This news speaks directly to the sometimes less than admirable ethics of our pharmaceutical industry; and to the very poor quality and mnimal utility of most psychiatric research; it does not however say anything very much about the usefulness of anti-depressant medication, which if actually matched properly to the depressive subtytpe are often vital to a speedy recovery; for my views on this please see the articles section of our site

The other new piece on our site is a short meditation on Buddism, neuroplasticity and ADD and the argument for the idea of "brain training as an a needed part of any treatment regime for adult ADD/ADHD

Hey there everyone

Welcome to the first installment of Dr Don's blog, where we'll be talking about stuff that going on as we try to launch both my book "Getting Unstuck; Unraveling the Knot of Attention Depression and Trauma, and a group therapy program based on the material thats inside the book.The book will be available in June, for now you can download the first chapter from this site if you'd like. The exact start of the group therapy program will announced in a few months; meanwhile we'll be gathering the names of folks who are interested in more information about it.

This is an exciting week for a number of reasons. First of all we are lauching our new website theattentiondoctor.com. where this week you can find some articles on mindfulness meditation training research done at UCLA and on a interesting book written by a childhood friend of mine, Jeff Brooks, about martial arts and meditation.

Second Ill be giving a talk this week at the Manhattan Adult ADD Support Group (maaddsg.org), on thursday night at 630 at the Seafarer's Hall on 15th street and Irving Place in Manhattan. Ill be presenting material from the book on the interaction of ADD with mood and trauma and about how it should be treated.

I hope to see some of you there

thanks