Programme information
David Reilly FRCP, MRCGP,
FFHom.‘Enhancing Human Healing'
The common ground on which all care stands or falls is the
capacity and limits of the human healing response. We have become
fixated on our 'tool' kit, be it drugs or CBT or herbal treatment.
Yet the main determinants of success are often the underlying
intentions and the quality of its expression through our caring
relationships and human experience. Human caring is an active
ingredient, and more. Psychiatry, psychology, packaged spirituality
or alternative medicine might bring Trojan horse delivery of a more
whole-person approach, but then again they might just deliver new
tools and theories. A bad encounter can negate the action of an
intervention, a good one can sometimes do without it.
We will look at an example of a patient describing a healing
response. What is it that helps or hinders? What would be needed in
a health care encounter and system to help it happen? Maybe we will
cross-reference to compassion, placebo, ritual,
psychoneuroimmunology, cultural shift, right brain function, and
anything else we come up with, but the issue remains. Have we
helped the patient move in a healing direction or have we not?
David writes: I have studied a number of
healing systems, for example, orthodox medicine, acupuncture,
hypno-analysis, homeopathy, and shamanism. I have been a researcher
and a teacher, looking for the common ground in all this and
wondering about humanity and healing. Recently I worked with
artists and architects on creating a healing environment in the
NHS. I began to see that my music and writing flowed from the same
well as my medical art. But then how could it not?
Present appointment: Lead Consultant Glasgow
Homoeopathic Hospital, Honorary Senior Lecturer Glasgow University
and Visiting Professor Mary land University. (Personal Profile BMJ
322:178 (20.1.2001), see also http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/322/7279/178,
http://www.adhom.org/)
Jennifer Barraclough FRCP, FRCPsych. ‘Integrated Cancer
Care’
The holistic approach to care for patients with cancer - or
other illness - aims to mobilise their own self-healing powers
rather than using extraneous treatments to combat disease. This
entails energising and balancing ‘the whole person’ - body,
emotions, mind and spirit. Interventions include diet,
complementary therapies, healing and psychological and spiritual
counselling, combined within an individually tailored package. The
approach is mainly offered in the private and voluntary sectors,
with a large self-help element. Input from oncologists and liaison
psychiatrists has been very limited. Indeed, there has been some
hostility from orthodox professionals, until recently at least.
Whether the holistic approach improves survival from cancer is a
controversial question on which the evidence is conflicting.
However, there is evidence for improvements in quality of life,
symptom control and patient satisfaction. A selection of case
vignettes, mainly from the book ‘Integrated Cancer Care’, will be
used to illustrate the approach. Experience with a group programme,
CHRYSALIS, and its introduction to patients and staff within an NHS
setting will be described.
Jennifer writes: I qualified in medicine from
Oxford in 1970. I worked in oncology and general practice before
specialising in psychiatry. From 1978 - 1991, I worked in
psycho-oncology research at the University department of
Psychiatry, Southampton, which included the investigation of
depression in patients with lung cancer and the relationship of
life event stress to prognosis in breast cancer. From 1991 - 2000 I
was consultant in psychological medicine at the Churchill Hospital,
Oxford, working mainly with cancer care.
Following training at the College of Healing, I became
interested in holistic approaches to cancer care and how these
might be integrated with conventional treatments. My books ‘Cancer
and Emotion’ and ‘Integrated Cancer Care’ are relevant to this
issue and I am co-editor of Claire Lewis' book ‘Psychoimmunology of
Cancer’. I now live in Auckland, New Zealand, with a practice in
life coaching and continuing to write.
Michael Weir MBChB, BSc, MFCM, MFHM, MRCPsych.
'Non-ordinary states of consciousness
in healing and health. The work and techniques of Stanislav Grof’
As a psychiatric resident, Stanislav Grof volunteered for a
formal experiment with LSD, which had been discovered by the Swiss
chemist Albert Hoffman. Grof’s experiences with LSD awakened within
him an intense, lifelong interest in non-ordinary states of
consciousness. He embarked upon a systematic exploration of the
therapeutic, transformational and evolutionary potential of these
states - 'an extraordinary adventure of discovery and
self-discovery'.
My talk will focus on the theoretical models of consciousness
and the therapeutic practices developed and employed by Professor
Grof. I will be comparing his work with that of other progressive
thinkers and practitioners from the fields of mind-body medicine,
transpersonal psychology and Eastern mysticism. I will introduce
Grof’s cartography of the unconscious mind, which embraces
biography, together with perinatal and transpersonal domains. In
particular, I will outline the breathwork and physical techniques
of Holotropic Breathwork, as used in both psychiatric and
non-psychiatric settings
Michael writes:
I am currently completing retraining in psychiatry following a
transfer from public health medicine five years ago. As a public
health director and consultant I was concerned with the
psychosocial dimensions of organic illness and developing services
for patients with heart disease, cancer and chronic fatigue
syndrome. Central to all these programmes of care has been a
mind-body philosophy and the therapeutic use of clinically
standardised meditation, including techniques derived from
Vipassana, and from Psychosynthesis.
My work seeks to encompass the biomedical, humanistic and
transpersonal domains of human experience. I completed Holotropic
Breathwork training with Professor Stan Grof in 1991 and have since
used this technique with both patients and health care
professionals. I have been a meditation practitioner for over 25
years, being particularly influenced by the work of Rudolf Steiner
and Stanislav Grof, the approach of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and
Buddhism. I am currently researching the impact of meditation and
breathwork techniques on a variety of conditions including
addiction, sexual abuse and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.