Amen Clinics, Inc is a group of 4 neuropsychiatric clinics founded by Daniel G. Amen which use single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) in an attempt to diagnose and treat mental disorders.
Daniel Amen claims it is possible to use SPECT to help diagnose and manage cases of brain trauma, underachievement, school failure, depression, obsessive compulsive disorders, anxiety, ADD, aggressiveness, cognitive decline, and brain toxicity from drugs or alcohol.
Through taking an image of the brain Amen believes it is possible to notice which portions of the brain are out of balance and hence make a more accurate diagnosis of problems and prescriptions for correcting them. Dr. Amen has said that "Psychiatrists remain the only medical specialists that never look at the organ they treat."[1]
Amen Clinics have the world’s largest database of functional brain scans used in psychiatric medicine, now totaling over 65,000 scans collected over more than two decades.[1] It has locations in Newport Beach, California; San Francisco, California; Bellevue, Washington, and Reston, Virginia.[1]
While the Amen Clinic claims, via their website and books that they are able to create better and more effective treatment plans for patients due to SPECT imagining, the American Psychiatric Association has questioned the clinical appropriateness of Amen's use of SPECT, stating "The clinical utility of neuroimaging techniques for planning of individualized treatment has not yet been shown." To date, the Amen Clinic has not shown that patients using his treatment approach have better outcomes, however a majority of patients are satisfied with their treatment.[2]