Mental health/illness is now no longer being quietly whispered about but spoken of boldly and with confidence. As much as this is a good thing I feel are we in danger of overcompensating and swinging to the other extreme of the current pendulum where we’ve seen the mind and body at opposite sides of a spectrum. This attitude with all the good intentions I feel is potentially equally dangerous. In demanding the same attention aren’t we still missing the point that it’s not one or the other? That said it would seem mental health is still getting a raw deal in the age of evidence based practice. A paper by the Royal College of Psychiatrists quotes the following statistics to demonstrate underfunding of mental healthcare relative to the scale and impact of mental health problems, “Mental illness is responsible for the largest proportion of the disease burden in the UK (22.8%), larger than that of cardiovascular disease (16.2%) or cancer (15.9%). Overall, the economic and social costs of mental health problems were estimated at £105 billion in 2010. In comparison, the wider annual UK cost of obesity is £15.8 billion...however, only 11.1% of the NHS budget – £11.9 billion – was spent on NHS services to treat mental health problems for all ages during 2010/11.”
Poor old Rene Descartes’ is often cited and blamed for being the architect of the mind / body split, now famously or infamously labelled Cartesian Dualism. The present incarnation of the now embedded medical model of diagnoses and treatment is the NHS. They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing but a little research indicates the motivation behind Descartes’ action was in response to the conditions of his time. He was trying to move things along by creating space for scientists to develop their thinking and practice, breaking from church dogma by stressing that the mind/spirit and body don’t influence one another. With that we have had more than enough time to put Cartesian Dualism in perspective. Does that then prove the power of illusionary ideas to capture the imagination and the fallacy of the rational mind?
Part 2 to follow next week...
Poor old Rene Descartes’ is often cited and blamed for being the architect of the mind / body split, now famously or infamously labelled Cartesian Dualism. The present incarnation of the now embedded medical model of diagnoses and treatment is the NHS. They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing but a little research indicates the motivation behind Descartes’ action was in response to the conditions of his time. He was trying to move things along by creating space for scientists to develop their thinking and practice, breaking from church dogma by stressing that the mind/spirit and body don’t influence one another. With that we have had more than enough time to put Cartesian Dualism in perspective. Does that then prove the power of illusionary ideas to capture the imagination and the fallacy of the rational mind?
Part 2 to follow next week...
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