ADHD 2.0: New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction—From Childhood Through Adulthood

The authors discuss Dr. Vincent Felitti, who, while treating obese women, discovered a connection between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and obesity. Further studies have shown that ACEs are precursors to poor health. Hallowell and Ratey quote Dr. Vivek Murthy, author of Together: The Healing Power of Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, who found that loneliness was the most common issue he saw among his patients. According to the authors, families with ADHD tend to have higher ACE scores. Love, the authors assert, is the “antidote” to ACEs. Multiple studies, including one on obese rabbits by Kelli Harding and a long-running study in Harvard started in 1939 by George Vaillant and carried on, at the time of writing, by Robert Walding, show that love is critical to mitigating ACEs. Dr. Hallowell also embodies this idea, as he has an ACE score of 8/10, which puts him at high risk for ill health, but he enjoys a happy and healthy life, attributed in great part to his strong sense of love and connection and the early relationship he had with his grandmother, Gammy.

Hallowell and Ratey introduce the concepts of psychosocial integration—or belongingness—and dislocation, or the lack of belongingness, which is described by Bruce Alexander, author of Globalization of Addiction, as “psychologically toxic and untenable” (56).