Daniel G. Amen

You, Happier: The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type by psychiatrist Daniel G. Amen was interesting (of the raised eyebrow variety). I was vaguely aware that his first book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life was popular, but that was all I knew as background information before I started this book.

Alarm bells started going off in my head very quickly—right at the beginning of chapter one, in fact. Dr. Amen writes that he encourages all his patients to watch a show more video by Dennis Prager with the message that happiness is a “moral obligation.” Excuse me? As someone with major depressive disorder, I would have zero desire to see a psychiatrist who comes out with that nonsense. Then I checked Wikipedia to find out who this Dennis Prager character is. Turns out he’s a conservative talk show host, and from some of the quotes included on the Wikipedia page, he sounds like quite the wing nut, like gay marriage being on par with incest kind of stuff.

The book begins by introducing readers to Dr. Amen’s seven secrets of happiness. These are then explored further in the book’s five parts: the neuroscience of brain types and happiness, the biology of happiness, the psychology of happiness, the social connections of happiness, and the spirituality of happiness.

Part one talks about brain types that Dr. Amen has identified based on activation patterns in brain SPECT scans. As a quick detour, SPECT stands for single-photon emission computed tomography. It involves administering radioactive isotopes that bind to specific tissues in the body, and it allows for 3D imaging. In terms of evidence-based neurological applications, it can be useful for distinguishing between Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia.

Returning to the book, Dr. Amen identifies five primary brain types: balanced, spontaneous, persistent, sensitive, and cautious. There are also eleven combination types. A “happiness prescription” was given for each type, including supplements and activities to affect different neurotransmitter systems. What I found weird about this is that it jumbled personality and illness in together, when they don’t necessarily have anything to do with one another.

Some of the advice was… different. Dr. Amen recounted some very particular advice to someone to get a persistent type female all hot and horny (my words, not his), including a rather interesting assertion about baby powder being an aphrodisiac. He wasn’t fully anti-medication, but he wasn’t especially keen on them, either. He wrote that these SPECT scans showed certain medications, like benzodiazepines and opiates, “had toxic effects on brain function, making brains look older and less healthy than they should be.” I don’t think toxic means what he wants it to, and this idea of brains looking older and less healthy is all very subjective and seems to be his own concoction, so just no. I also didn’t like that he was recommending St. John’s wort without talking about it interacting with antidepressants. I’m not at all anti-SJW, but if one is talking about it for mood, it’s only responsible to mention that interaction.

There was a chapter on “happy nutraceuticals.” Dr. Amen recommends “four basics everyone needs to be happy”: a broad-spectrum multi-vitamin/mineral, vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids, and probiotics. That’s some pretty pricey happiness. He makes a lot of other supplement recommendations, with particular recommendations for different brain types. One could very easily spend a whole lot of money on all the recommendations for things that don’t necessarily have evidence to back them up.

The part of the book devoted to the psychology of happiness talked about automatic negative thoughts and being Pollyanna-positive (Pollyanna was actually used as an example). There were also recommendations to work on “disciplining your mind” and choose to “focus your thoughts on true and noble things.” I’m not sure what to say to that besides hmm….

In the “Happy Connections” chapter, Dr. Amen promises to “give you a brain-based blueprint to more blissful connections with the important people in your life.” Maybe I’m just cynical, but really? We also get another Dennis Prager quote that ends with the line, “Obviously, we can control our moods.” Thank you for that expert opinion…

Throughout the book, there are a lot of references to and testimonials for Dr. Amen’s 30 Day Happiness Challenge, which costs $49 US. Besides that, there were a lot of references to his Amen Clinics, and a great deal of encouragement for people to get SPECT brain scans, not once, but on a regular basis. The Amen Clinics website doesn’t provide a price. A 2016 Observer article noted a price of $3950 for an exam, which involves two scans, one while resting and the other while concentrating. A 2012 Washington Post article gave a figure of $3500 for “a full initial session, including two scans.”

According to the Washington Post article and the Daniel Amen Wikipedia page, SPECT scanning for psychiatric diagnostic purposes is not generally accepted as being useful. A Google Scholar search for “SPECT scan major depressive disorder” doesn’t turn up anything in terms of diagnostic validity. So that’s a lot of cashish for something of questionable value, especially when Dr. Amen encourages people to get them done regularly.

Besides that, he plugs the podcast he and his wife do, his many other books, and his branded supplements (a 30-day supply of the “Daily Essentials Bundle” from his BrainMD site costs $114.62). I can see why one Goodreads reviewer described this book as a “long format advertisement.” It does feel rather like the written version of an infomercial.

Near the beginning of the book, Dr. Amen writes, “My prayer for young people is often, ‘Please, God, do not let them be famous before their brains are developed,'” because the brain’s dopamine control centre isn’t fully developed until around age 25. That sounds like an awfully privileged group of young people he’s working with for that to even be a thing. There’s some famous name-dropping, too, like big-name influencers that I’ve never heard of because I don’t care about influencers. There was a fair bit of my friend-ing, too, like “my friend Tony Robbins.”

So yeah, that was the book. The infomercial-ness was tacky, and given how much money Dr. Amen is making off these probably unnecessary brain scans, he’s not so hard up for cash that he needs to push the promotion angle. But he’s sold a lot of books, and I’m sure people will buy this one. I’m also fairly sure that a lot of those people aren’t going to pick up on a lot of the book’s weaknesses, and that’s fine. But just like the saying that money can’t buy you happiness, I don’t think all the money that Dr. Amen is urging you to spend is going to make your life wonderful.

I received a reviewer copy from the publisher through Netgalley.

This review first appeared on https://mentalhealthathome.org/2022/05/18/book-review-you-happier/ show less

Summary: Two clinicians, one a neuroscientist and the other a mental heath practitioner, explore how the findings in their two fields may combine to raise mentally healthy, loving, responsible, and resilient children.

Parenting is both a joyful and daunting task. No manuals come with our children. And the urgency seems to never have been greater, with needs for mental health counseling due to anxiety, depression, and behavioral issues rising, as are teen and young adult suicide rates.

This show more book combines two approaches that together seem to hold a great deal of promise. One approach is the advances in brain science, particularly as imaging helps us look at what is happening in the brain and how things like food, environmental factors, media, and repeated blows to the head affect cognitive processes and brain health. There are things that both harm and help, including parental actions at various points of brain development, particularly since the pre-frontal cortex starts developing before birth and doesn’t finish until about age 25.

The other approach, developed by the Love and Logic Institute teaches parenting with both love and logic. In an early chapter on parenting styles the authors outline how they act in a “love and logic home”:

I will treat you with respect so that you know how to treat me.
Feel free to do anything you want, as long as it does not cause a problem for anyone else.
If you cause a problem, I will ask you to solve it. Please let me know if you need any ideas for doing so.
If you can’t solve the problem or choose not to, I will do something.
What I will do will depend on the unique person and the unique situation.
If you ever believe that something I have done is unfair, please let me know by whispering to me, “I’m not sure that’s fair.”
We can schedule a time to talk. What you say may or may not change what I decide to do.
Instead of parents who are helicopter parents, drill sergeants, or uninvolved, they discuss a model of of parents as consultants. These parents cultivate deeply affectionate relationships with each child that communicate empowering messages about what their kids can do and let them do it, allowing affordable mistakes, that if possible, the children solve without parents rescuing or micromanaging.

The first part of the book includes chapters on goal setting, ways to build mental fortitude, loving discipline including the development of self-discipline (one power tip here was that when children misbehave, let them know it is draining your energy and that they will need to do something that will replenish that lost energy–as doing a parent’s chores or forgoing an activity requiring parental time). They help us recognize Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) and how they undermine our mental hygiene and how to counter them. There are a couple long chapters on raising strong and capable kids and helping them develop and maintain healthy bodies. They also include chapters on differing parental styles, helping an underachieving child, dealing with technology, and when things just aren’t working and where to get help.

The second part of the book explores specific parenting challenges from potty training to dating, including helpful sections on bullying and peer pressure. They address healthy parenting during divorce and navigating the role of a step parent. They conclude with two lists: 130 things you can do to help your kids grow up to be mentally strong and twenty things parents of mentally strong kids never do.

One of the things I liked about the book is that I felt treated with the respect and affirmation they suggest we cultivate in our homes. One had the sense that we will all make mistakes at this and that even so, there is hope. We can change and our children can grow more resilient, capable of making their own decisions and solving their own problems. I loved this idea of allowing kids to make affordable mistakes early, being allowed to resolve them as well as understanding the consequences their mistakes have for others, including the parent.

This is one of those books, if purchased during parenting years, that is likely to become worn and dog-eared from being referred to so often. There is so much good, practical information that no one could absorb in just one reading. And as one on the other end of parenting, I recognize both some of the things we got right and some of the things we can agree with our adult son that we just got wrong. It’s never too late for that kind of self- and mutual-understanding–another way we may continue to grow in resilience rather than grow inflexibly older.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review. show less

An interesting book overall with a lot of good information about how to keep a focused, healthy brain.

The most interesting part of the book to me was where he describes how the various parts of the brain affect one's mood, including one's sexual drive (or lack thereof) and the foods you can eat and habits you can cultivate to help them function properly. My least favorite part was his section on identifying personality disorders -- mainly because with each section I started wondering if he show more was describing me.... (I hear that's normal when reading these kinds of books, but it's no less disconcerting.)

One of the things that struck me while reading this book is making your brain (and therefore your sex life!) healthier isn't really all that different from making your body healthier overall. Basically: Exercise regularly, eat right, avoid junk food and unnecessary drugs. Granted there's a little more to it than just that, especially if you have some physical or emotional trauma, but it's a good place to start.

My biggest criticism is that the author seems to view things a little too much from his specialist point of view. Looking at your behavior as a function of your brain activity (or lack of activity) is certainly useful and beneficial from time to time. But I would argue that it's just as good not to think too much about whether one's brain is working properly, lest it become an obsession.

And of course, I believe that looking at the physical is only half of the equation. I do think that there is a metaphysical ingredient as well. (I understand the argument that metaphysical feelings, such as those that we have with regard to "free will" or possessing a "soul," could themselves be a trick of the brain, but if that's the case, why fight it? Clearly our brains think such metaphysical feelings are beneficial to us, and evolution has equipped us with such brains, so embracing those feelings must be a good thing, right?) I enjoy thinking about chicken-and-egg problems such as: Are decisions made by activity in the brain or does brain activity occur because decisions are made? Regardless, where does the decision or activity originate? Does a brain that is functioning properly make "right" or "good" decisions, or even "more correct" and "better" decisions on average? And so on... show less

As an adult with ADD, diagnosed early in life, self medicated for most of the rest - I appreciated this book for the practical advice. I couldn't relate with the types of ADD as I felt there were several that I could relate with, and the experience of identifying with one or the other, I found very confusing. At the time of reading there is a test available online, which I may follow-up with.

I noticed a distinct pattern to Dr Amen's approach where he uses devices to externalize what is show more otherwise invisible and internal. Is it science? We're not sure, but it's very convincing. Clever!

I came away with a new respect for ADHD Coaching, hypnosis and self-recorded affirmations as a way of re-programming. show less