I'm a devoted reader of The Economist, probably spending 6-8 hours each week pouring through it, and taking notes, making summaries, all in the probably futile attempt to retain what I've read and put the world into a framework that I can barely understand. The Letters to the Editor section sometimes provides the most insightful reading. This past week, the perspective of a mental health professional from London really jolted me. I'm going to type in the majority of his letter because I think it's that valuable. The author is Dr. Mark Salter, a consultant psychiatrist working for the East London Foundation Trust. The bulk of our work lies at the beguiling interface between mild and severe mental illness. Complexity is in the eyes of the beholder. Meanwhile, the cruel elision of austerity and covid continues. It is now routine for a frightened, hallucinating person to be hospitalized, if we can find a bed, only to be discharged without any meaningful assessment in order to make way for another patient, deemed more severe at that moment. If a bed is found, it is often far from the patient's support network, assuming that he or she has one. Modern managerialism choosing price over value, has dismantled former tight-knit, well-honed, multidisciplinary teams into a fragmented maze of specialisms, often based on a diagnosis of questionable value. The patient's experience today involves a solitary wandering between services with waiting lists now measured in years. The system now serves itself rather than the patient, providing a convenient lattice of storage silos for distress and discontent, not unlike the asylums of old, but with fewer bricks. In these uncertain times we choose the illusory comfort of rational abstractions, such as pills, Greek-sounding diagnoses and quick therapies over the messy, more demanding need for an empathetic, trusting professional relationship which endures over time. Until we return our over cherished reason to its proper place alongside embodied emotion, hope, imagination and our need to belong, we will continue to get the mental services that we deserve! Peter T. : I've posted here about the suffering I see with families struggling mightily with a child with autism. We've all seen suffering play out in different settings, with varying levels of cruelty and pain. We obviously have minimized much of the suffering that has forever plagued the majority of the world, but damaged people, frightened and lost people are adrift, and spread throughout America. Today I have a dentist appointment. I have had some genuine pain this past week, but I have access to modern dentistry, and can't imagine how many people are suffering with abscesses, and other woes. I'm rambling a bit but it underscores the absolute necessity of living with a sense of empathy. I know we are teaching it in schools as part of social-emotional learning, but even SEL is under attack in some quarters. And empathy requires that we extend it to even some groups whom we dislike. Peter T.
A Portrait of Suffering That I Can't Shake...and Shouldn't!
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I'm a devoted reader of The Economist, probably spending 6-8 hours each week pouring through it, and taking notes, making summaries, all in the probably futile attempt to retain what I've read and put the world into a framework that I can barely understand. The Letters to the Editor section sometimes provides the most insightful reading. This past week, the perspective of a mental health professional from London really jolted me. I'm going to type in the majority of his letter because I think it's that valuable. The author is Dr. Mark Salter, a consultant psychiatrist working for the East London Foundation Trust. The bulk of our work lies at the beguiling interface between mild and severe mental illness. Complexity is in the eyes of the beholder. Meanwhile, the cruel elision of austerity and covid continues. It is now routine for a frightened, hallucinating person to be hospitalized, if we can find a bed, only to be discharged without any meaningful assessment in order to make way for another patient, deemed more severe at that moment. If a bed is found, it is often far from the patient's support network, assuming that he or she has one. Modern managerialism choosing price over value, has dismantled former tight-knit, well-honed, multidisciplinary teams into a fragmented maze of specialisms, often based on a diagnosis of questionable value. The patient's experience today involves a solitary wandering between services with waiting lists now measured in years. The system now serves itself rather than the patient, providing a convenient lattice of storage silos for distress and discontent, not unlike the asylums of old, but with fewer bricks. In these uncertain times we choose the illusory comfort of rational abstractions, such as pills, Greek-sounding diagnoses and quick therapies over the messy, more demanding need for an empathetic, trusting professional relationship which endures over time. Until we return our over cherished reason to its proper place alongside embodied emotion, hope, imagination and our need to belong, we will continue to get the mental services that we deserve! Peter T. : I've posted here about the suffering I see with families struggling mightily with a child with autism. We've all seen suffering play out in different settings, with varying levels of cruelty and pain. We obviously have minimized much of the suffering that has forever plagued the majority of the world, but damaged people, frightened and lost people are adrift, and spread throughout America. Today I have a dentist appointment. I have had some genuine pain this past week, but I have access to modern dentistry, and can't imagine how many people are suffering with abscesses, and other woes. I'm rambling a bit but it underscores the absolute necessity of living with a sense of empathy. I know we are teaching it in schools as part of social-emotional learning, but even SEL is under attack in some quarters. And empathy requires that we extend it to even some groups whom we dislike. Peter T.
