Written by a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who has also authored a book on attention deficit disorder, Change Your Brain contains dozens of brain scans of patients with various neurological problems, from caffeine, nicotine, and heroin addiction to manic-depression to epilepsy. These scans, often showing large gaps in neurological activity or areas of extreme overactivity, are downright frightening to look at, and Dr. Amen should know better than to resort to such scare tactics. But he should also be commended for advocating natural remedies, including deep breathing, guided imagery, meditation, self-hypnosis, and biofeedback for treating disorders that are so frequently dealt with by prescription only.

Dr. Amen was a welcomed guest on my Internet radio program, Coping with Caregiving.

Jacqueline Marcell, Author, Elder Rage

Dr. Amen should be commended for his vision and imagination. He is trying to go against the grain of mainstream psychiatry by trying to improve diagnosis of serious mental illness via SPECT scans. This is a courageous thing that takes grit and guts. He is, for the first time ever trying to get psychiatry to actually look at the brain to diagnose.

This book takes Amen's experience with functional neuroimaging and allows him to make recommendations other psychiatrists cant really do. Because Amen diagnoses so differently, it can result in more precise and individualized psychiatric diagnosis, with more personalized treatment plans. Only SPECT scans can provide this sort of approach.

Read this book and demand that psychiatric services in your area begin incorporating functional neuroimaging into their diagnostic procedures. You will probably be impressed by the results.

The book presents the results of what was groundbreaking scanning techniques for studying brain function. Dr. Amen compares the brain function of ADHD, chemical abusers and "normal" brains. The images create a visable difference and that is where the Dr. develops his conclusions.