Terry's case points to a paradoxical and perhaps misunderstood aspect of Amen's approach. However radical the use of SPECT may seem, his treatment is unconventional only in that it's far more heterogeneous and informed by alternative-healing methods than the Johnny-one-note pharmaceutical orientation of most psychiatrists. While not shy about prescribing medications, often in twos and threes, he also recommends nutritional and herbal supplements, cognitive therapy, EMDR, biofeedback, parenting-skills training, diet, exercise, meditation, and abstinence from alcohol.

How does treatment with Amen compare with what another psychiatrist might recommend? Might not Terry, for example, have done just as well if she'd found a reasonably creative and open-minded therapist willing to try a variety of different approaches and hang in with the family for as long as it took? Of course. Did the SPECT scan speed up the process? Possibly. Does Terry's family believe that scans are magical keys to the kingdom of the inner brain and that Amen is the sorcerer who, essentially, saved their child? Completely. "Without Dr. Amen, she'd probably be in some military school now," says Terry's mother. "I feel blessed to have met him." Among the Amenophiles, this attitude isn't unusual.

For all that people say about what most mattered to them about their experience at one of Amen's clinics, it would be a mistake to underestimate the weight of the old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words. People believe they're seeing an actual picture of something empirically real, fundamentally true, and undeniably revealing about themselves. This apparently incontrovertible glimpse of reality can be unwelcome, even shocking, but it has to be taken seriously. Before the scan, Terry Mitchell had furiously refused to take medications, and felt her parents were disciplining her unfairly. When her scan was shown to her and explained, she looked at it quietly and somberly for a long time, and said, "I guess I really do need medications." It's easy to believe Amen when he talks about the power of these scans to convince even adolescents that the drugs they ingest really are hurting their brains--there's the evidence.

Critics might argue that this troubled child has been conscripted into a possibly false sense of her personal pathology by a misused and misleading test. But, paradoxically, scans that show something amiss can be oddly reassuring. "Do you know what people's biggest worry is about seeing their scan?" Amen asks. "That the scan will show nothing ; that it'll look normal, which means that they're suffering because they're weak or bad." After her scan, Terry felt relieved, her mother said, because the scan explained why she was having so much trouble and removed her sense of self-blame for not acting like a "normal" girl.

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