As a physician, researcher and writer Dr. Maté has made it his life's work to improve the physical and psychological health of families. Whether in the groundbreaking work of Hold on to Your Kids, or the common sense wisdom of When the Body Says No, he has always asked new questions and provided bold new answers for parents and children.

In addition to his work on the child-parent relationship and the stress-disease connection, Dr. Maté is also one of the world's leading experts in ADD (attention deficit disorder)—three of his children have the condition. He has treated hundreds of adults and children with ADD, giving countless seminars to parent groups, doctors, teachers, and other professionals. Dr. Maté currently works in Vancouver's Downtown East Side.

These days stress is ubiquitous-in the work place, in the home, almost everywhere that people interact. It takes a heavy toll, unless recognized and managed effectively and with insight.

Western medical practice separates the mind from the body, a disconnect contrary both to ancient human wisdom and to the latest findings of modern research. Science has now clearly shown that mind and body can be separated only in textbooks, but not in real life. The brain and body systems and organs that process emotions are intimately connected with the immune centres, the hormonal apparatus and the nervous system. Thus emotional stress, especially of the hidden kind that people are not aware of, can undermine immunity, disrupt the body's physiological milieu and prepare the ground for disease. In almost all chronic conditions, from cancer to ALS to multiple sclerosis to the autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease or Alzheimer's disease, hidden stress is a major factor.

Dr. Maté's presentation includes research findings, compelling and poignant anecdotes from his own extensive experience in family practice and palliative care, and also illuminating biographies of famous people such as the athlete Lance Armstrong, comedian Gilda Radner, or baseball legend Lou Gehrig.

Topics Covered Include:

Parenting is much more stressful and difficult these days because our children no longer look to adults for emotional support, the teaching of values, or the modeling of behavior. Peer orientation refers to the tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction: for a sense of right and wrong, identity and codes of conduct. Peer orientation undermines family cohesion, sabotages healthy development and fosters an aggressive and prematurely sexualized youth culture. For parents already challenged by the demands of our multitasking world and by sheer economic necessity, peer orientation greatly complicates the child-rearing task.

Children were never meant to be in a position where they are so dominant in influencing one another. This state of affairs may be the norm today, but it's neither natural nor healthy. It is historically a new development, due to economic and social influences prevalent since World War II that have undermined adult-child connections.

This talk aims at helping to restore parenting to its natural intuitive basis and the adult-child relationship to its rightful preeminence. The concepts, principles and practical advice articulated will empower parents, teachers and the other adults who play a nurturing role to be for children what nature intended: the true source of contact, security and warmth. Parents must regain their natural authority, without coercion, punishment and artificial consequences. Children need to be protected from becoming lost in the emotionally barren and culturally sterile world of peer orientation. They need a stable community of supportive adults.

Topics Covered Include:

The basis of healthy child development: the attachment relationship with parents, teachers and other adults.

Why the traditional relationship has become undermined, leaving parents frustrated and children alienated and immature.

What peer orientation is and how it competes with children's adult attachments. How to recognize its signs.

How peer orientation leads to boredom, aggression, bullying, precocious sexuality, drug use, developmental problems and "unteachability."

How to restore the healthy adult orientation of our children, including methods of discipline that do not alienate children but bring them closer.

Gabor Maté currently works as the staff physician at a clinic for drug addicted people in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, many of them with other mental health issues and HIV. His new book, In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, shows that their addictions do not represent a discrete medical disorders but only the extreme end of a continuum of addictive behaviours rife throughout our society. The source of addictions is not to be found in genes, but in the early childhood environment where the neurobiology of the brain's reward pathways develops. Stress then, and later in life, creates the predisposition for addictions, whether to drugs, alcohol, nicotine, or to behavioural addictions such as work, shopping or compulsive sexual acting out. Our culture, with its emphasis on consumption and external sources of satisfaction further reinforces the addiction process.

Helping the addicted individual requires that we appreciate the function of the addiction in his or her life. More than a disease, the addiction is a response to a distressing life history and life situation and, at the same time, a limitation of the addict's own possibilities.

Topics Covered Include:

What is the source of addictions.

What happens chemically and physiologically in the brains of people with substance dependency or behaviour addiction.

How much choice does the addict really have and how much responsibility.

What are the "blessings" of addiction as experienced by the addict (e.g., as emotional anaesthetic, as personality booster, as social lubricant, and so on).

Developing rational, evidence-based and human approach to addiction.

How to encourage the addict to take responsibility.

Looking at one diagnosis alone, that of attention deficit (hyperactivity) disorder, or ADHD, we see that the number of children on medication in North America has more than quintupled in the past decade. Dr. Maté presents convincing evidence that in ADHD, as well as in oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and in most other childhood conditions that lead to learning problems and dysfunctional behaviours, we see not disease, but underdevelopment. The good news is that brain development and psychological growth can take place at any time in the human life cycle. Dr. Maté's revolutionary perspective and dynamic presentation will empower parents, educators and health professionals to promote healthy development, rather than just address symptoms.

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