Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness

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.

Product Description
BRAIN PRESCRIPTIONS THAT REALLY WORK
In this breakthrough bestseller, you'll see scientific evidence that your anxiety, depression, anger, obsessiveness, or impulsiveness could be related to how specific structures in your brain work. You're not stuck with the brain you're born with. Here are just a few of neuropsychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen's surprising--and effective--"brain prescriptions" that can help heal your brain and change your life:
To Quell Anxiety and Panic:
Use simple breathing techniques to immediately calm inner turmoil
To Fight Depression:
Learn how to kill ANTs (automatic negative thoughts)
To Curb Anger:
Follow the Amen anti-anger diet and learn the nutrients that calm rage
To Conquer Impulsiveness and Learn to Focus:
Develop total focus with the "One-Page Miracle"
To Stop Obsessive Worrying:
Follow the "get unstuck" writing exercise and learn other problem-solving exercises


From the Trade Paperback edition.

First, I agree with most of the what is said in the other positive reviews. The book is engaging, informative, and most importantly, it offers a great deal of hope. It breaks new ground, and it allows the layman to make better sense of the complexities of brain biology, personality, and behavior. To those few reviewers who insisted that Amen does not actually tell us "how to change your brain" - this is simply not true. Amen offers a variety of options including traditional meds, (even a nice chart to help with the benefits of each), and alternative treatments such as herbal and dietary suggestions.

As many know, Amen's use of SPECT scans is very controversial. Although he has a following of professionals, he is also careful to say that the scans are NOT a primary diagnostic tool - only a way to confirm a tentative diagnosis. This may be because SPECT is not approved by the DSM, nor the APA(to my knowledge), as an accepted and reliable diagnostic tool for ADD or any of the other problems Amen discusses. Given the stodgy psychiatric mentality in the US toward new approaches, this should not be a problem in and of itself. Yet given the controversy, a serious flaw of the book is that it does not address the number and types of cases in which this approach does NOT work.

But I also want to offer some cautions to those who might be tempted to passively accept the book in its entirety.

1) In my own case, two Drs and a thrapist in Amen's own office had different interpretations of my loved-one's SPECT scan, yet there was no consultation among them to resolve the issue. 2) In this layman's view, the book also seems to show some inconsistency in interpreting the scans. Why does the same over-active image area become the diagnostic key in one case, but then seems irrelevant in another ? 3) Again in my personal case, the drug protocol for my loved-one was the opposite as that described in the book. Despite my questions, this was never explained to me. 4) A recent read of another book by a different author using PET scans showed completely different parts of the brain producing some of the same symptoms as Amen describes. But I suppose this doesnt matter as long as the treatment works.

So what is the upshot of my review? My experience causes me to question the credibility of some parts of the book. Interpretation of these scans needs refinement, and Amen may need to get his own house in order as well. Yet, I have found no other professional who understands the intricacies of ADD and the associated problemsas well as he does. Amen truly cares, and this book is a 'must-read'. Regardless of the imperfections, his approach DOES work for many, many people. But do not be lulled into a passive acceptance by the enticing simplicity of the diagnosis and explanation.

Feel free to email me your thoughts. And to those dealing with the pain of ADD its related problems, I wish you peace and comfort. Remember that the heros in a race are not only those who win, but also those who continue to struggle until they finish.


One of the Most Important Books I have Ever Read   August 12, 2001
Riowest (Carlsbad, CA United States)
332 out of 347 found this review helpful

This book shows you that there is hope for everyone! Though the title is a little silly, it is appropriate. This book actually shows you pictures of brains with different emotional/chemical imbalances. Give it to anyone who questions whether diet or medication really affect their feelings and relationships. Many people believe that medication is for weak people and that they should be able to conquer their problems through sheer will. I have known countless people who have tried everything to overcome emotional issues but actually changing their physiology. This book gives indisputable evidence that problems like depression, aggression, ADD and Alzheimers are physically based. The changes in patients' brains before and after treatment (often, but not always medication-based) are phenomenal. It demonstrates with the SPECT series brain scans that our brain chemistry rules our emotions.

I learned that even minor bumps to the head can change people's personalities and ability to learn. Dr. Amen shows pictures of brains with little or no activity in areas that have been injured, mirroring the patients' emotional or intellectual difficulties.

Amen is very clear that he always uses talk therapy and teaching communication skills before he contemplates having a SPECT series done. His point is that many people can benefit from learning new skills and ways of looking at life, but some are truly stuck because their brain activity keeps them looping on negative thoughts, reacting with extreme anger, obsessing about limited situations, or shutting down when they try to concentrate. When medication is used these patients can finally put the communication and coping skills they have learned to good use.

This book helped me understand people in my life who have seemed hopeless, shallow and even vicious. It showed me that there is hope for everyone who is willing to open their mind, get proper treatment, and challenge how they have viewed the world up until now. The exercises he gives the reader are very specific and helpful. If another reviewer thinks that there is nothing concrete in the book, then they aren't willing to look at their diet, their habitual way of thinking, and herbal and medical treatments. The prescriptions are plentiful and very specific.

It is an easy read, very accessible, with fascinating stories that pull you in. It is not academic or inaccessible. Quite the opposite. It's a great book for anyone who wants to know more about themselves and how their body works.


Chicken Soup for the Brain   September 4, 2002
Ben Hekster (Mountain View, CA USA)
235 out of 306 found this review helpful

Based on his experience with functional brain imaging, Dr Amen has come up with a model of the relationship between behavior and brain structure. The model is a partition of the brain into five regions, and a mapping of most (if not all) psychological problems onto over- or underactivity in one of these regions. By surgery or medication that targets the afflicted parts, the problems can be cured. He presents some compelling anecdotal evidence that brain physiology causes behavioral problems. But then anecdotal evidence usually is compelling.

Dr Amen has written another "breakthrough" book on curing Attention Deficit Disorder, one about spiritual growth, and another about dealing with relationship problems. One might wonder whether the doctor is spreading his expertise somewhat thin, but these fields are in fact connected in that medication can correct all sorts of misbehavior. The book actually does present an example of marriage counseling by medication. But when it relates chemistry to how close or distant we feel from God, it feels like we're leaving the solid ground of science and being launched into the astral plane.

On closer reflection, many anecdotes given in evidence of the model can be extremely tenuous. Is it really true that grief over the death of a loved one boils down to a "deep limbic loss" of touch, voice, and smell? Isn't it likely that something less bodily might play a role in our feelings of loss? And if the limbic system is equally affected by voice and appetite, wouldn't we feel the same deep limbic grieving over the loss of some particular food? With each brain part responsible for so many behavioral problems, doesn't fixing one cause others?

I wonder if we actually learn something by blaming behavior on some particular part of the brain, or if we are just taking well-recognized problems and relabeling them. There would be a point to all this if it led to new understanding or therapy. In fact, after doing much work to demonstrate the power of functional brain imaging to diagnose behavioral problems, the doctor goes out of his way to dissuade people from using the technique. In fact, many of the therapies that he does recommend appear quite conventional (cognitive behavioral therapy, diet, exercise).

The book isn't really as married to the model as it purports. Although the framework is structured around this brain partition, the meat of the book consists mostly of stories that bear no relationship to it, and branch out into new theories that are not given any other theoretical basis. Are we still pulling out the old hackney that Mozart is good for you? I've heard it makes your plants grow.

The tendency to view psychopathology in terms of a simplistic unidirectional chemical causality shows when the author unambiguously states that depression is caused by a neurotransmitter deficit. But this is either false or completely irrelevant. When somebody becomes depressed over the death of a loved one, the external event quite obviously must have something to do with this.

I'm not saying that there is no connection between brain and behavior. But the book appears to completely disallow the possibility that rather than being slaves to uncontrollable chemical imbalances, brain chemistry could itself at least partially be a reflection of our behavior. Perhaps the psychological-physiological dichotomy is a false one and both are aspects of the same thing, like the wave-particle duality of matter.

The book does have some useful things to say about the various medications that are in use. The anecdotes if anything are interesting, as are the brain scan images (those of addicts in particular are downright scary).

If the book purports to have a scientific basis, it would have benefited from a much more extensive set of references to support some of its claims. Psychology is a tough nut to crack, and there is still a tremendous amount of research ongoing to understand how our brain works. In the meantime, the field is open for anybody with a pet theory to claim they have the answers.


Quackery - 1st Hand Experience   March 29, 2008
Bancker
120 out of 125 found this review helpful

Dr. Amen should have his medical license taken away. I spent $5,000 going to his clinic for supposedly severe ADHD, ingested a radioactive solution, performed mental agility tests, and then went under an MRI machine. The purpose was to show where my brain was deficient and take certain drugs to cure these deficiencies. Over the course of 3 years in San Francisco, I must have ingested 12 to 15 drugs to help me though none of them did.

Thank god I came back to NYC and saw a Columbia-trained psychiatrist who not only said that I was mis-diagnosed with ADHD but had anxiety which he immediately alleviated with Lexapro and ordered me to stop taking the other meds. He politely chuckled at the photos of my so called brain deficiencies and explained that the brain does not work that way. Also, he showed me numerous articles published in psychiatry journals and textbooks to support what he was saying.

Dr. Amen is a quack who scares desperate people with his book and treatments to make money. Sure, you read the book and say "yeah, that's me" or "I have that." It human nature to want to understand what your problem is and there is certain relief when you find certain symptoms that match yours. His book has these syptoms. If I could have given the book a zero especially in hindsight, I would have. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't have a zero rating.


Snake oil for the Uninformed   March 20, 2008
Dr. Lloyd Ross (Ridgewood, New Jersey)
119 out of 148 found this review helpful

As a clinical psychologist with 32 years of practice,I was amazed at the faulty science that Dr. Amen used to try to prove his theory. I will not go into great detail but I will attempt to make several points. Brain imaging studies have never shown any psychiatric pathologies. For example, several years ago, an NIMH researcher tried to show that there was a particular lesion in in the stratial area of the brains of almost all ADHD diagnosed boys. It later turned out that these children were all recieving stimulant drugs for an extended period of time. It is well known that those very drugs CAUSE those lesions in the stratial area of the brain. What Dr. Amen is selling in this book is "junk science" that even main steam psychiatry has rejected. His conclusions are not supported by science.

Dr. Amen states that depression is caused by a neurochemical deficit. First of all, there has never been a research study that has even come close to verifying this. Secondy, all human beings have felt depressed at some time in their lives. Does this mean that we all have a chemical imbalance? Feeling depressed usually is caused by the things that happen to us in our lives, and then the chemicals in our brains are modifed as a reaction to this. They don't cause it. Blaming the brain for everything that happens to us is not only simplistic but it removes the humanity from us in a reductionistic way so that we don't have any responsibility for our own lives or what happens to us.

Finally, Dr. Amen suggests that utilizing drugs stops bad behavior very efficiently. Well, if we proceed with this distorted logic, we should give everyone a chemical lobotomy. I would like to inform Dr. Amen that a bullet to the head would stop bad behavior even more efficiently than his drugs. If Dr. Amen were treating Einstein or Edison for their behavior I wonder if we would have ever heard of them.

This book should be more accurately titled: "Making Money With Pop-Psychiatry and Junk Science: The Diary of a Snake Oil Salesman"

Lloyd Ross, Ph.D., FACAPP.