Disability-and-Health Books

Of all the books about medical things that I have read this is the best by far. Dr. Wright's advice should be must reading for anyone with ADHD as well as families, close friends, and those who are simply interested in that subject.

Dr. Wright has some good views on the abuse and misuse of the terrible drug "Ritalin". She also shows how there is more to treating children with behavioral problems then simply giving them drugs. What I didn't like was that she still condones the use of stimulants for treating children who have been labelled with "ADHD". Drugs like Ritalin treat only the symptoms. They do not get to the root of the problem, and therefore, only work while the person is under the influence of these drugs. These are the same drugs that are sold on the streets and refered to as speed. Do you realy think we should be giving them to our children? I don't think so! If you really want to learn about treating behavioral problems, hyperativity, hypoglycemia, allergies, poor nutrition, learning differences, and other symptoms that are commonly misdiagnosed as "ADHD", please read "NO MORE RITALIN", by Dr. Mary Ann Block. After over a year of my own research on my daughters problems, I have found Dr. Block's book to be an invaluable asset. She shows how perscription drugs are big bussiness, and how they make big money off of us at our childrens expense. She helps you to solve the problems by getting to the root of the problem, not just covering the symptoms. "Do We Need Ritalin", is a good start, but "No More Ritalin" takes us all the way to healing our children into healthy and produtive adults, with out turning them into drug addicts!

I am writing this review with the intention of encouraging a much-needed re-print of this excellent little book. I have been recommending it to parents, school counsellors and teachers since it first appeared, and was shocked to hear it has become unavailabe. I have read a great number of books about ADHD, and Dr. Wright's is one of the clearest and most comprehensive works of its kind. In an easily-readable and empathetic FAQ form, she describes ADHD and its sufferers, and presents scientifically serious arguments for a global, multimodal treatment approach, explaining the use and rationale of Ritalin and other treatments, including various other medications as well as psychotherapeutic and psychosocial interventions. Dr. Wright has distilled her encyclopedic knowledge and obviously vast experience into a useful guide primarily intended for the parents of children with ADHD, but it should also be on the "must" list of all who have any responsibilities in the raising, care and education of all children and adolescents. The only change I would have wished for would be the title. A better one would have been, perhaps: ADHD AND ITS TREATMENT - WHY RITALIN AND WHY MORE. In closing, it is worthy of note that Dr. Wright, whose book was published in 1997, was already working within the framework described and implied by two excellent review articles in the current volume of the New England Journal of Medicine (1999, 340:40-46 and 780-788).

Lena was born without arms, and with one of her legs severely deformed. In this book she tells the story of her life. Lena could have easily become bitter and angry, but instead she has maintained a positive, courageous, and upbeat attitude. Even in her baby and early childhood photos, you can see that she radiates happiness. She had a very supportive family. Her dad said after she was born, "Arms or no arms, she needs a home anyways!" (Some felt she should be institutionalized.) They made every effort to give her a "normal" life and help her be independent.

Despite her severe disability, Lena has accomplished much in life. She has learned to function very independently - it is absolutely incredible what she can do with her one good foot!!! She was an accomplished swimmer when she was younger, and also a talented singer. She continues to travel the world singing and sharing her testimony. Lena has a strong and vibrant Christian faith. Some might have rejected their faith/beliefs in the face of such problems. But Lena believes that God makes no mistakes, and that her life is a part of God's special plan for her. In many ways, her disability has given her unique opportunities in life.

This book is an "easy read" - I read it in just a couple hours. It left me feeling inspired, encouraged, hopeful, and thankful! I have no right to complain - I have two arms and two legs!

This delightful little book is the story of a famous singer and world record-breaking swimmer. She tells of her life with refreshing sparkle, so much so that I had to constantly remind myself that this woman was born without arms. Unpretentious, simple and direct are words that spring to mind when describing this tale.

Her passionate desire is that all people should have the same joy, and she shares several keys to living a happy life in spite of obstacles. The central point is her vibrant faith in God.

One shortcoming of the book is that the editing is not always up to scratch. That said, the book is easy to read, and is a pleasure on the eye. The photographs beautifuly supplement the text.

When I finished the book, I wanted more. I wished to have a fuller account of people and times.

But the aim of the book is not to tell a history, but to inspire others. And in this regard it succeeds completely.

Hi! I am a handicapped girl myself. I live in Taiwan. I think that Lena is an extremely courageous person. I hope that I am that courageous too. I think the book is most encouraging. Life is not a bowl of cherries. The most we can do is to make life much more easier for others as well as ourselves. I would like to get in touch with the author-Lena Maria Klingvall-personally. I wonder if you can help me to make my dream come true. I'd be greatly appreciated. Thank you and wish you all healthy and joyful! Sincerely, Anneila / 2000,9,16

This is one of those 'easy reader' books that come out of England, I believe, but it works well for a "read to me" book also. We have a ton of these, this particular one was great for when my 3.5 year old son was going in for same day surgery. The pictures look more English than American (i.e. my son asked what that THING was on the nurses' head - a nurses' cap) but overall these books do a great job at just explaining what is going on, with real people. Much like a picture book, and nothing offensive or scary about it.

When my son was going to have tubes put in his ears and his Adnoids removed, we purchased this book. He was just barely 3 years old, but this book explained on HIS level everything that was going to happen to him (from the little boy's ear first hurting, to everything that happens at the hospital before and after the surgery).

We took the book to the hospital and he pointed out to me where in the book it showed each step as they happened to him (ex. nurse taking his temperature). The book did this so well, and my son was so calm, the doctor decided he didn't need to give him the normal shot of something to calm him down. They just carried him down to surgery.

He just turned 4 and we are having to remove his tonsils this next month. He is reading the book again and loving it. Even though the procedure is not the exact same as the one the little boy in the book has, it has been very easy to replace ear ache with sore throat. EXCELLENT BOOK

This book is about a boy who goes into the hospital for a one night stay after an ear operation. The pictures and words are bright, cheery and comforting to young readers. My daughter liked to read this book even after her hospital stay. It was written in England so it shows hospital scenes (like children in group wards) which didn't apply to my daughters stay. I pointed out differences between what would and did happen to her. A good book to show a very young child what going to the hospital will be like and that it isn't as scary as it might seem.

The book was for a class I was taking in school. It was very informative, and very detailed which was good when it came down to taking tests.

I was very happy with my product and it arrived in the specified amount of time.

This book includes lots of information on development, from the perspective of families and persons in community settings. It has much practical applied information with contemporary examples.

For persons interested in the interaction of human maturation and developmental differences, this is the best text I've seen.

I have been a work study coordinator in Ohio for 19 years. This book outlined fresh new ideas for transition plans and gave specific guidelines for certain disabilities. I have retired and am now working again with transition in public high schools. This is similar to a college textbook. It is thorough and gives sample transition plans to examine. It does cover autism in one chapter. I highly recommend this book for special education teachers and transition specialists.

Elaine Krieg Amherst, Ohio

This book is a great resource for teachers who deal with high school transition of those with special needs. It provides scenarios and lots of reference information. Even though it is very lengthy and sometimes difficult to follow (side boxes of information on page), it is useful.

Excellent reference for caregivers, service providers and educators on transitioning young persons with disabilities into the work force.

This is currently my favorite autobiography by an autistic person. The reasons for this may be purely personal -- the author does a good job of portraying areas of autism that I don't see portrayed often. For instance, she describes sensory experiences that shift and fluctuate over time, the extent of which she does not entirely understand or notice until they start stabilizing a bit. The book also describes an emotional and physical reality I can relate to, including why the author is grouchy about certain things, what her body does in response to these things, and how her body reacts to her thinking in general. Its author seems like a slightly more amplified version of me autism-wise, but having both the language and the courage to describe things I could not. (This also makes me highly biased toward this book and less likely to be able to find fault with it even when I try, so keep the positive bias in mind.)

The plot itself is a familiar one. An autistic person is born, goes to special education for awhile, learns to type with facilitated communication, starts going to regular high school, and eventually goes on to university and physically independent typing. The way it is told is both more well-rounded and more humorous than most similar accounts manage, and is occasionally punctuated with accounts by the author's sisters and mother, and quotes from other people the author has interacted with, including a correspondence with the Australian fiction author John Marsden.

The author herself has a carefully cultivated dryly amusing tone to her writing -- and, in defiance of stereotype, she describes exactly why and how she cultivated it as she was learning to write. This defiance of stereotype, and her matter-of-fact admitting when she doesn't know something about autism, is another part of why I like the book so much. At one point, a teacher asks her why she's having trouble working with her. The author says, "I don't know. Even *I* don't fully understand autism." These sorts of admissions are rare in similar books.

This book has helped me to learn how to describe what I did not know how to describe, like the shifts in sensory experience. Equally important, it showed me that it was *possible* to describe things I had been afraid to describe, like the author's feelings about school, her reactions to being told she wasn't really disabled or autistic, and so forth -- unlike most books that put everything in terms of autistic characteristics, the author of this book put many things in terms of emotions *added to* autistic ways of showing them (including showing affection by backing into someone). It also shows the discrepancy that can exist between how non-autistic people perceive autistic people, and what we are *actually* feeling and thinking.

While I gave the book five stars, there are a few things I am uneasy about or don't like. Tony Attwood's foreword and afterword contain erroneous ideas about prior books (including that this is the first book by a fully non-speaking person, which isn't the case), and I find that they try too hard to stuff the author into the box she's been trying to step out of. The book spends a lot of time describing a three-dimensional reality of autism that few books manage, and the afterword seems to try to tidily show researchers which parts to pay attention to -- particularly the parts, unsurprisingly, that deal with "theory of mind" and other popular research ideas. I think it would be much better not to bias people to only look at one aspect of the person or to look at a person only as a potential research subject; there is too much of that going on in the autism research world already.

Neither of those things are part of the main body of the book, however. While there are a few ideas and tones within the main body that make me uncomfortable, I'm not sure there could be a book without that. If you buy it, be aware that many people have found it easier to read it outside of chronological order than in chronological order, for some reason. For the most part, this is a very good book, showing an unusually three-dimensional view of life as an autistic person, and if I'm going to recommend an autobiography by an autistic person, this is always among the first.

Lucy's book is wonderful, playful, highly intelligent and utterly tell it like it is. Her book introduces the reader not only to the little known world of facilitated communication (through typing) but also to her relationship with her colorful quirky family and her life in Australia. Having met Lucy many times, I know she is as much an inspiration to people through this book as she is to those who meet her.

[...]

This is the autobiography of Lucy Blackman, an amazing autistic
woman who has made remarkable progress in adjusting to the
world despite her autism. Facilitated communication and auditory
integration therapy play major roles. What I found particularly
valuable (but at times hard to understand) were the insights
she gained into her own difficulties when she saw changes as a
result of these therapies and techniques. This book is hard
to follow at times, but worth the effort for anyone trying to
understand autism.

I read this book in 2 nights. Once I got started could not put it down. Same story to others I loaned the book too. Eva is from my home town & her brother goes to my church. The Pastorshe speaks of Rodney Quesenberry takes the word from the Bible & will step on your toes if needed. Her story is from the heart & she is always the same when you see her. She is a blessing!

The author does a fabulous job of allowing the reader to see into eva's heart. she is so vulnerable to allow the reader to see right into her. i loved the book and i love eva. she is a very influnential person to me personally. she is woman of faith and love. she is genuine in who she is. i strongly recommend this book. it also makes a great gift for seekers.

I throughly enjoyed this encouraging and candid book about how a Southern girl from poor circumstances overcame paraplegia's tragedy to become an influential and much sought after speaker and singer, through prayer and faith in the Lord Jesus. The influence of her simple but praying mother on her life. It is funny,a book that many people will be able to relate to. It is encouraging to see how God has used this young woman, given her a Godly husband and blessed them with two children. If you need hope, read this book. It is a simply written book about one young woman's life out of and in a wheelchair. If you liked "Joni" By Joni Eareckson Tada, you will like this book.

This marvelous handbook with an unprepossessing cover has as its source of power, a significant number of stories and anecdotes
based on the author's personal experience as a natural healer. There is no stronger force for changing and altering our lifestyle than "been there, experienced that".
Schneider takes us from his early years having been born blind through wonderful tales of wry humor and astute observation of his peers and adults that shows his gifts as an intuitive healer.
The book is easy to follow: divided into three parts with 17 chapters. The author vacillated between despair and hope for many years, and the force of his will, along with the inevitable mentor we have all had at times in our lives led him to open up to the world as his vision emerged. As a senior in high school,
Schneider began teaching others how to recognize the equilibrium and balance that our bodies cry for as we gradually act all too often against our better angels of healthiness.
Living abroad, the author continued to learn and express his own wisdom as he helped others with diseases such as polio, failing vision, back problems, arthritis, even multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy. Examining the all-too-human phenomenon of "internal resistance to healing", the author uses case studies, graphic drawings, and repetitive examples to help us gain confidence that we too can alter and adopt the behavior of well-being. For example, Schneider devotes a fair amount of space to the well-known but oft overlooked Bates Method of better vision. But he does not focus on that issue with great technical reliance on medical terminology. Indeed, the value of this fine volume is that the subject matter is dealt with in common sense verbiage: "back problems" are near-universal and the mechanics are often way beyond what most people want to know. Schneider knows his subjects of body movement, natural healing with sleep and time, the use of yoga and its variants, visualization, and support from friends and compassionate healers. Einstein (or Virginia Woolf) would be quite happy with the emphatic clarity of his writing.
This book will be of value to those interested in holistic health (and medicine) as well as Philosophy (mind and body issues). His commentary on ageing, breathing, body imagery, and the need to simply "listen" to ourselves may seem simple expressed in a review, but through the two-page Epilogue of his School's Education Director we come to realize that the Meir Schneider Self-Healing Method is a healthful approach of great quiet authority. The seven-page Index is an excellent tool for referencing Schneider's well laid-out and thoughtful scheme of how some 30 people came to improve their health and stay healthy.

Note: a much-shortened version of this review first appeared in
the Nov/Dec issue of New Age Retailer.

The first half of this book is Dr Schneider's account of how he got to where he is now and who he has helped and healed. The second half has specific exercises for specific disabilities. This book has changed my life and improved my health. I bought this book to help improve my eyesight since Dr Schneider was born blind, and it improved much more than that. I sound like a preacher when I talk about it, my belief is so strong in how well it works. I noticed increased energy immediately after trying some of his exercises. I have developed and improved pain management. I really wish I could get other people to read this book to help themselves, it really helped me.

Author Meir Scheider was born blind but was convinced his condition was not permanent: as teen he began to work on eye exercises to reverse his blindness and became able to see over time. His primer on self-healing thus comes from experience and is packed with exercises which have had proven results for arthritis, eye problems, back pain and more.

When an adult gets Hepatitis C, the symptoms are often vague. Tiredness, irritability, and mood changes are more difficult to explain than something concrete and visible like a broken leg. Sometimes the treatments make the parent more depressed. In the absence of good understanding, the child may blame herself or her parent.

This book describes a young girl whose mother has Hepatitis C. The story is clear and straightforward. It does a good job of explaining the illness and showing that the mother loves her child even when she is feeling ill. However, the plot is fairly plain, and the characters do not come alive.

I have recommended this book to mothers and fathers who are dealing with hepatitis C.

It is a great book. Touching, real, and affirmative.

Hedy Weinberg, Shira Shump, and Dr. Everson have done a wonderful job with a very difficult subject to address with children.

I think this book is a wonderful and much needed resource for helping adults explain hepatitis C in terms that children can understand.

Carole W. Williams, RN, MN, Neighborhood Nurse Clinical Content Coordinator.

This book has been very informative. It has an abundance of information. As a new grad I refer to this book often and I have found it very helpful.

As a current OT student, this book is wonderful! The pictures and the understandable language is great!! This book helps with the understanding of the OT profession. I only hope that you get out of it what I have!!

As an OT you are often in doubt of what to do for your cliet. This book helps you to gather your knowledge and focus it on the actual problem. Almost everything is there. A great book to get ideeas! But don't take it for a bible. Remember - You have to add yor own exprinces and, perhaps,a'lot of other sources to solve the problem. Never forget you and your knowledge is the most valuable resource for your client.