Rachel Chambers's Reviews > Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again

I felt similarly about the ADHD part. I don't have ADHD, but I am autistic. While unlike you I did find some useful information at other parts (I especially found the way facebook and other services are designed enlightening) that part made me felt so disgusted upon reading it. He commits all of the cardinal sins of clueless neurotypical people writing about neurodiverse people, mistakes that if he had just shown this part to ANY neurodiverse person they could have told him how bad it was. But it's clear with that part he only wanted to talk about us and not to us or with us.

"then explains that it doesn't really exist its just how a child is raised that leads to it" except he doesn't. he states multiple times that there is still a lot of scientific debate about the causes of ADHD and presents arguments from both sides of the aisle - genetic or environmental. he then even explicitly states that he disagrees with the notion that ADHD is exclusively caused by the environment, and on top of that he also goes out of his way in MULTIPLE chapters - including the ADHD one - to point out that the core of the issue is systemic and structural and not based on individual failure - so how exactly is he judging parents?

I was troubled that in a chapter *before* the ADHD chapter, he insinuated that ADHD is caused by "problems at home," and in that particular case, sexual abuse of a child. (I wonder how he'd feel if someone implied that homosexuality was caused by the same thing?) In the later chapter he doesn't say much that disavows his earlier position, and blames environment, both on the micro level (the household) and the macro level (lead/BPA/air polluants/etc). That was a point in the book where it became clear that this guy is more of an eco-warrior than an attention warrior.

I struggled a bit with the ADHD chapter. I do think that he TRIED to give it a fair look at both side of the research, and I believe that he stated that he DOES believe there are biological components to it, but that sometimes those biological components are triggered by environmental aspects (I forget the analogy he used). If anything, the chapters on ADHD and it's causes struck me as someone who hasn't quite made up his mind WHAT he thinks about it. I think he is intrigued by cases in which finding root environment causes and dealing with them can enable children to get off of medication, but I think he's not ready to say no child should be medicated. I think he's still forming his own views, and honestly I think the book might have been better had he left those chapters out or approached from a different angle because I don't think he quite got his message across. It would have been better presented as "sometimes children struggle with focus, and our approach to dealing with that needs to be multi-faceted."
As far as being one-sided, I think he went out of his way to try to present both sides on most points. He has even gone so far as to provide access to his full recorded conversation with a tech writer he disagrees with so that readers who wish to listen to the fully expressed viewpoint of that subject can do so. (Similarly, all his recorded interviews are available on the book's website.) That, to me, is the mark of someone who is trying to give an honest presentation of both sides of an argument.

I felt similarly - I had so many thoughts around this reading too. In my review I also added how I felt like his dissection of surveillance capitalism was really one dimensional and his approaches towards discussing "free play" was also so silly. I'm pretty sure every ND person I've ever met has never had an issue with free play or deciding what to be passionate about .... God...

But this is not a book about ADHD! this is one chapter. So why you focus on this and what is wrong, that the author says about our environment, social media, diet, etc, if it only can helps??

As someone with ADHD myself, I don't think there's a big problem with this book's perspective. Although there may be some areas of debate in the details, it is an area of science where facts must be studied objectively, and the author only considered multiple positions and wrote with a focus on one position. Pursuing your own blind faith is not science. Those who criticize the author by saying they are ADHD or neurodiverse people or their parents, how dare you confidently speak for all parties? There are people like me who listen to the author's opinion. And experts also have different opinions. I do not completely deny the existence of ADHD, nor do I completely deny drug treatment, but these days I am interested in the argument that ADHD is somewhat a manufactured disease, a social disease, and exaggerated by medical capital. Don't you feel that stigmatizing ADHD-related symptoms as a disease is a way of thinking that otherizes and discriminates against 'ADHD patients' and people with neurodiversity? I feel such danger among opinions that are extremely critical of the author's opinions. In other words, I personally don't 100% agree with the opinions in this book, but I think it's worth listening to. This is not just the author's delusion, but an opinion based on expert interviews. And science is science. Science should not be definitive, but should be open to the possibility of falsification. Listen to this possibility or that possibility and make a choice with the help of an expert and your own free will. I criticize this author's opinions and believe that extreme rating terrorism by obsessing over a specific, trivial topic among the overall themes of the book is damaging to democracy and a negative influence of social media. Furthermore, it is difficult to tolerate someone ignoring other values emphasized in the book as if they are insignificant because of the value they particularly emphasize. I am not a native English speaker, so this article was written using Google Translate.

I believe that the dichotomy and othering of NT and ND by some neurodiverse parties does not help us NDs at all. My friends with obsessive-compulsive disorder, paraphilic disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are taking a very cynical view of the fact that even if we call them ND, only a very small number of mental illnesses or disorders actually act as if they represent ND. Or should we make a distinction even within mental illness or disability and divide NDs from just crazy people? I am not an English speaker, so this article was written through a translator.

As a result of my research, the scholars interviewed in this book are all people with authority representing a field, and they are more trustworthy than the subjective opinions of individual individuals. Do you not believe them because they are not neurodiverse parties? I don't blindly trust doctors, but I basically trust what my professionally qualified doctor says. I have no intention of believing the baseless things people with ADHD tweet.

And both biological and environmental factors influence human formation. Just as it makes no sense to go to the extreme in denying innate biological factors, it is also dangerous to take a eugenics attitude that only emphasizes biological factors in the extreme. That's something that needs to be sorted out scientifically. However, among the negative reviews, I don't think I've seen any that made scientific points, and most of them just backlash based on subjective feelings or personal experiences.

I didn't get the idea anyone in this book thought ADHD doesn't exist.

What I did see was a lot of professionals feeling like they had failed children in their care because they hadn't ruled out environmental stressors before medicating children.

To quote the book "medication does not cure sexual assault"

That doesn't mean medication isn't useful, it just means that doctors should look at a patients experience holistically so that we can give them the correct care. When Johan was talking about Robert and his mother the solution involved care for the whole family including helping the mother reconnect to her body and going to therapy to understand why she couldn't protect her child.

Psychiatry is a field that is often hampered by the "If the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail". And the rest is solved by cruel optimism. Take the pills and that'll help you make the lifestyle changes.

I also have adhd (and autism) myself.

I think a lot of us want to be reassured by the idea that adhd is just a problem we can solve/manage and then we'll have something closer to a "normal" life. If anything I find that to be the more abelist view on neurodivergence. It's part of who we are and something society should embrace and make space for.