Historically, medicine in modern western society has defined is mission in terms of curing disease the medical disorder while overlooking illness the patients experience of disease. By accepting this view of their problem, patients experience of disease. patients have been taught to ignore how they are reacting emotionally to their medical problems or to dismiss those reactions as irrelevant to the cause of the problem itself. That attitude has been reinforced by a medical model that dismisses entirely the concept that mind influences body in any consequential way.
Yet there is an equally extreme ideology in the other direction : the notion that people can cure themselves of even the most pernicious disease simply by making themselves happy or thinking positive thoughts, or that they are some how to blame for having made themselves sick in the first place. The result of this "attitude will cure all" rhetoric has been to create widespread misunderstanding and confusion about the extent to which illness can be affected by the mind and, perhaps worse, something to make people feel guilty for having a disease, as though it were a sign of some moral lapse or spiritual unworthiness.
There is increasing evidence that the truth lies somewhere between these extremes. By scanning the latest scientific research, this paper provides a clear understanding of the degree to which our thinking, our emotions and our response to stress play a powerful role in health and disease. The preponderance of American sources reflects the greater resources available for original research in that country. Most of those transatlantic references were collected by David Goleman whose work both inspired and informed this review,( reveiw complied by Adam Michael Sanders).
Recent Comments