I've been doing a bit of reading on the web and have discovered that Dr. Daniel Amen has received a fair bit of criticism from organizations like Quackwatch and Science Based Medicine. Here's a
summary of criticisms.
Also, the National Institute of Mental Health describes SPECT scans for ADHD as
not ready for prime time: As exciting as such advances are, brain imaging is still primarily a research tool when it comes to mental disorders. Scans are appropriate for ruling out obvious pathology, like brain tumors, as possible causes of symptoms. The differences in brain structure and activity seen in disorders like schizophrenia or ADHD, for example, are typically only meaningful when comparing group statistics. There is simply too much individual variation in brain structure and function for an individual's scan to be diagnostic or predictive, given the current state of the science.
If I was investigating ADHD and my child, I would exercise
extreme caution with SPECT scans and doctors who have been heavily criticized. As in, I would do a ton of reading with a skeptical eye and probably consult people with very good reputations in the field and absolutely nothing to gain financially from the scans.
