Have you heard of the name Edward Hallowell? If you haven’t, or live outside North America, here’s a brief description. Edward, or Ned Hallowell, as he likes to be called, is a child and adult psychiatrist and the founder of The Hallowell Center for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Boston MetroWest, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle.

He is a prolific author, despite claiming to have Dyslexia. Among Hallowell’s publications include Finding the Heart of the Child, Driven to Distraction, Answers to Distraction, Attention Deficit Disorder : A Different Perception, A Walk in the Rain With a Brain and Delivered from Distraction.

But there’s far more to him than that.

Ned Hallowell would have made a great TV presenter, or a game show host, or should have been on the stage. Or a door to door salesman. Or leading an advertising campaign. Or a politician. Or a marketeer. He is a natural performer. He has the gift of the gab and is both eloquent and articulate. I’ve listened to him on You Tube and whilst I profoundly disagree with much of what Ned says, he captures my attention.

Unfortunately a great deal of the time, whilst an entertaining and interesting speaker and something of a showman, most of his opinions are questionable. His books aren’t based on science. They are marketing.

BACKGROUND

In 1981 Hallowell attended a lecture about psychiatry about children with ADHD and said realized he had got it.

For the following 10 years Hallowell diagnosed people with ADHD using the Conners scale which itself is very vague and ambiguous. Looking at that it is amazing who hasn’t got ADHD, not who has.

HIS STANDARDS AND VIEWS

In an interview on 1st May 2015 he declared that the USA was so violent because it was built on and is full of ADHD. Hallowell said “The people who colonized this country were loaded with the ADHD genes, hence our current gene pool is well stocked with ADHD. It has driven our greatest successes–but is also why we are such a violent nation”.

On 12th October 2011 he said “There are two main reasons the diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is high in the U.S. First of all, our gene pool is loaded for A.D.H.D. Consider the central symptoms of the condition: distractibility, impulsivity and restlessness. Consider also the positives that so often accompany A.D.H.D.: being a dreamer and a pioneer, being creative, entrepreneurial, having an ability to think outside the box (with some difficulty thinking inside of it!), a tendency to be independent of mind and able to pursue a vision that goes against convention. Well, who colonized this country? People who have those traits!”

I regard those traits as being normal human behavior, traits most of us have. Ned has them. He’s a human. I do. I’m a human. You do. You are human. Psychiatry is nowadays become about pathologizing human behavior.

Ned continues to say “Back in the 1600s and 1700s, you had to have special qualities — some would say special craziness — to get on one of those boats and come over to this uncharted, dangerous land. And the waves of immigration in subsequent centuries also drew people who possessed the same special qualities. In many ways, the qualities associated with A.D.H.D. are central to the American temperament, for better or worse”. That’s nonsense. So all the great explorers, Columbus, Daniel Boone, Admundsen, Scott of the Antartic, Captain Cook, Polo, Francis Drake, all had ADHD? Of course they didn’t!!!

Hallowell has also said that about Australia, saying that people travelled from Europe to conquer unknown countries (And rape and plunder lands and take them away from an indigneous population).

Perhaps Columbus had ADHD then if you go by his reasoning?

ADHD certainly was good news for Hallowell. Driven to Distraction sold more than a million copies and was translated into a dozen languages, making Hallowell and co-author John Ratey, who also claims to have ADHD, a millionaire.

BIG PHARMA LINKS.

I saw this from 18th September 2008: “Dr. Edward (Ned) Hallowell is a practicing psychiatrist and founder of the Hallowell Center for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Sudbury, Mass. A former instructor at Harvard Medical School, he is the author of 10 books, including the bestsellers on ADHD: “Driven to Distraction,” “Delivered from Distraction” and, most recently, “CrazyBusy.” He is a paid consultant for McNeil Pediatrics(TM)”.

His other ties were with Eli Lilly, Novartis and he also has been a paid consultant for Dore Clinics.

THE DRUGS

For many years Hallowell, like many others who were big names in the ADHD field, including Joseph Biederman, William W Dodson, Russell Barkley, Jeffrey Katz, Thomas E Brown, claimed that Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin and other drugs are “Incredibly and unbelievably safe” and “Safer than aspirin” or mentioned the benefits but not the side effects.

All that of course, depends on how you interpret the words “Safe”.

These drugs are versions of Amphetamines. They send your blood pressure up. Fine if you have dangerously low blood pressure but otherwise not a good idea. They increase your heart rate to tachycardia, placing strain on your heart, thus making it work harder. They can increase your body temperature. They can cause strokes and heart attacks. They can make you psychotic and delusional, as in the case of Richard Fee who was misdiagnosed in 2009 and after two years on Adderall, hung himself, at aged 24, on 7th November 2011. They weren’t “Safer than Aspirin” for him.

Roger Griggs, the pharmaceutical executive who introduced Adderall in 1994, said he strongly opposes marketing stimulants to the general public because of their dangers. He calls them “nuclear bombs” warranted only under extreme circumstances.

To further contradict Hallowell claim that these drugs are “Safer than Aspirin” and “Incredibly safe”, Adderall was banned in Canada for a few months in 2005, because of the deaths of children who were taking it.

It wasn’t safer than Aspirin in that case.

More so, it was formerly used as a slimming pill in the USA, and was banned in 1982. However it was relaunched, probably due to big pharma pressurizing the FDA. Big pharma got Adderall allowed again in Canada a few months later in 2005.

HALLOWELL’S STATEMENTS

When questioned about his enthusiastic advocacy and promotion of psychostimulants, in 2012 Hallowell said: “Stimulant medications like Concerta and Adderall, are simply medications. When used properly they are often a godsend and as effective in helping people who have ADHD as eyeglasses are helping people who are near-sighted. 80% of the time they do work and much of that time the transformation is amazing, but if not, or if they cause side effects, the dose simply should be lowered, changed or stopped. It is as simple as that. Sadly this sensible approach is routinely blown up by the hyperbolic nonsense that appears too often in the media. The science is clear. Psychostimulant medication is unbelievably safe”.

Ned wasn’t slow to promote these drugs, asserting “Yet tragically most parents fear this medication, seeing it as a last resort, preventing legions of children and adults from ever reaping the extraordinary benefits that these safe and time-tested medications provide”.

He went on “It is foolish and incredibly stupid to disregard the science and subscribe to the nonsense that lead people not to take psychostimulants. The real problem is most people are afraid of these medications. The scientific and medical facts are they are safer than Aspirin, which kills thousands of people a year and yet it is available over the counter”.

Whoever said Aspirin was safe? It kills 8,000 people a year. It can be a very dangerous drug. But here are the facts that Ned doesn’t want you to know or hear. You can’t get addicted to Aspirin. You can say that when used properly, guns are incredibly safe. That doesn’t mean 30,000 people aren’t killed by shootings in the USA every year.

Hallowell went on to say “Despite being incredibly safe these stimulant medications are controlled substances and many doctors are afraid to prescribe them, which is tragic as it means many people who could and should benefit from them don’t. 9 out of 10 patients come to see me and the first thing they say is “I don’t want to use any medication”. There is massive ignorance among the public about them and a huge misinformation bias”.

No. It is not misinformation or bias. It is true. Suppose when McNeil are paying you two or three figure sums to promote their drugs, it colors your thinking somewhat.

His other recommendations are:

1. Diagnosis, which should include identification of talents and strengths. Make sure the diagnosis is both accurate and complete, taking into account the likelihood of coexisting problems.

Well yes. That’s not groundbreaking. It should apply to anybody in life.

2. Implementation of a five-step plan that promotes talents and strengths (detailed elsewhere in the book, this is too long to recap here, but is in a chapter called “How to Find the Buried Treasures: Five Steps that Lead to Lasting Joy)”.

3. Education – you need to learn what ADD is and what it isn’t as well as teach members of your family about it. You also need to explain it to teachers and all others who deal with your child or whomever has ADD. See the resource section of this web site and the appendix in Delivered From Distraction for more educational information about ADD.

4. Changes in lifestyle. Taking care of yourself has a huge impact on your brain and your ADD. You need to get enough sleep (critical!), eat right, exercise (which is actually one of the best treatments for ADD), calm your mind daily through prayer or meditation, stay connected with other people.

5. Structure – find external ways to create structure (there are a number of web sites that offer this type of help)

6. Counseling of some kind, such as coaching, psychotherapy, career counseling, couples therapy, family therapy

FAULTY MEMORY

One sign of getting older is when you start losing your memory. My memory is relatively ok in my advancing years. Somebody should let him know about his.

In November 2017 Hallowell said on his page “I’ve never claimed that America was violent due to ADHD”.

Read this statement in this URL. I doesn’t quite match his viewpoint then.

http://www.mentorcoach.com/hallowell2015/

In this interview Hallowell claimed that ADHD appears in 15% of the population. In December 2012.

Click to access It_Really_Is_All_about_the_Child.pdf

In November 2017, when asked about how common the condition was on his Facebook page, Hallowell said “About 5-10%”.

The amount of people with ADHD in the USA must have reduced from 2012 to 2017. I wonder what was the reason for the sudden and dramatic change in rates? You’d have thought more people would have been diagnosed, but according to Ned, the amount with it has decreased.

And About? Surely there must be a specific figure. The DSM says it is 5%. Keith Conners said between 2-3%. He slammed the 15% diagnosis rates.

Hallowell said “True, some uninformed people still wonder about ADHD, but the science is so solid that no informed person has any doubt but that it is real”.

What science is that? Russell Barkley? Who receives a substantial amount of his money from Shire and Eli Lilly and McNeil and other drug companies? Joe Biederman? William Dodson? Who was being paid 45k a year by Shire who make Adderall and said himself that the effects of Adderall “Generally mild”. What an amazing coincidence. Telling women they have ADHD by asking six questions on the revolution show. Where’s the science behind that Ned?