Dr. Daniel Amen

Background

Daniel Amen was born in 1954 in Encino, California. He studied at the University of Maryland, earned an A.A. from Orange Coast College in 1976, a BA from Vanguard University (then Southern California College) in 1978, and his medical degree from Oral Roberts University School of Medicine in 1982.

Education & Training

He completed his general psychiatric residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and his child and adolescent psychiatry training at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. He is double board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, in both general psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry. Between 1991 and 1995 he also completed an independent fellowship in nuclear brain imaging, 200 hours of nuclear physics training and 1,000 hours of supervised clinical scan reading, which led to a California license to work with radioactive materials.

Theoretical Influences

His approach draws primarily on the tradition of biological psychiatry and functional brain imaging, applying findings about brain activity patterns directly to the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric conditions. He founded Amen Clinics in 1989 to put this imaging-based approach into clinical practice.

Known For

Amen is best known as a pioneer of using SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) brain scans in clinical psychiatric practice to guide treatment. His clinics have built the largest psychiatric brain-scan database in the world, with more than 300,000 scans from patients in 155 countries. He is a bestselling author, his book Change Your Brain, Change Your Life has sold over a million copies, and he has served as a brain-health consultant to the NFL on concussion issues. It's worth noting that the clinical use of SPECT scans for psychiatric diagnosis remains a subject of active debate within mainstream psychiatry and neuroscience; some researchers have questioned whether the scan interpretations used in practice are sufficiently supported by peer-reviewed evidence.

Core Thesis

His guiding principle is "get your brain right and your mind will follow," the idea that many psychiatric and behavioral struggles, including issues highly relevant to parenting such as ADHD, anxiety, and anger, are at their root brain-health issues that can be addressed through lifestyle changes, nutrition, and targeted brain-health strategies, rather than through psychological or behavioral approaches alone. His body of work centers on brain health broadly, with the material most directly relevant to parenting concentrated around ADHD and children's brain health specifically.

Recommended Books

• Change Your Brain, Change Your Life (Revised and Expanded), his flagship and best-known book.
• Healing ADD (Revised Edition), most directly relevant for parents dealing with ADHD.