Michael Mayne on Holistic Medicine

Michael Mayne, busy parish priest who subsequently became Dean of Westminster Abbey within the Anglican Communion, was well qualified to write about the patient’s perception of healthcare. In his book A Year Lost and Found he describes his experiences and struggle with a debilitating episode of ME, or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, the post-viral fatigue syndrome. Of all the various treatments and advice he received for a condition that is still very little understood, he significantly gives special credit to a certain Dr D, whose particular efficacy in helping him cope with his condition is attributed to his grasp of the inter-relatedness of body and spirit:

"…he talked and he tested or massaged parts of my body. Sometimes he just talked. He had the great gift of encouragement. He understood that the question ‘How are you?’ is at root a metaphysical question, which is not sufficiently answered with clinical lists and data …but goes to the deepest part of ourselves as the complex and uniquely precious beings we are." (1)

Mayne tragically died from cancer in 2006, but not before heroically putting the finishing touches to his final book The Enduring Melody. This started as a meditation of his life, but when the cancer struck it became his daily meditations interwoven into an autobiography of his final year. The book is a brave and very thoughtful journal through those last ten months. It culminates in a reflective essay on illness and healing, and the need for a holistic approach:

"To treat a disease," he said: "is to inhibit it and hopefully help the body to destroy it or control it: to treat a patient is to observe, foster, nurture and listen to a life...
In an ideal [health service] it would be good if every doctor and nurse in training would reflect on the mystery of the human being with both the learning of the scientist and the observation and sympathy of the novelist or the poet." (2)

Mayne was writing of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service but his thoughts are equally relevant in the United States, which is actually ahead of the UK in recognizing the importance of spirituality in healthcare. Mayne understood only too well that chasm that is so often evident between what the patient actually receives from a short medical consultation and what he is really looking for.

(1) Michael Mayne, A Year Lost and Found, London: Darton Longman and Todd, 1987, p. 22. 

(2) Michael Mayne, The Enduring Melody, London: Darton Longman and Todd, 2006, pp. 13.

Studland Bay in January

 

Biological repair men or healers? Our over burdened doctors

"Doctors are not merely biological repair men, people who know how we work and people who can twiddle knobs or replace faulty parts when they threaten to go wrong. A doctor must be a healer in the fullest, most spiritual sense, someone who accepts that human beings are congenitally lonely and dissatisfied but who may be able to reconcile them to the difficulties of their condition...to share the journey [of pain or anxiety or grief] with the patient." (1)

The renowned Austrian Psychiatrist Viktor E Frankl survived four different concentration camps, including Auschwitz, during the holocaust. ‘Man lives in three dimensions,’ he wrote, ‘the somatic, the mental and the spiritual. The spiritual dimension cannot be ignored, for it is what makes us human.’ (2)

The early links between spirituality and healthcare in the history of American medicine were just about abandoned entirely with the Flexner Report of 1910. It was not until the 1960s that any links between spirituality, religion and healthcare began to re-emerge, primarily it would seem driven by the charismatic movement and the neo Pentecostalism churches.

the chapel at the Burrswood Christian Healing Hospital

But the movement to bring the soul back into medicine had started in the 1950s with psychiatrists such as Jung and Rogers, together with the work of Methodist Minister Leslie Weatherhead. Real growth in this field, however, really only came about in the late 1980s and the 1990s and started with what is probably the most famous experiment of all on the healing power of prayer. In 1988 Byrd, a cardiologist at the San Francisco General Hospital and also a devout Christian was struck by a conversation with a colleague about a terminally ill cancer patient. All medical avenues had been exhausted and the physicians really did not know what else they could do for the patient. We could try prayer, said Byrd (3). Thus began the prayer study that has inspired so many subsequent experiments into non -local healing phenomena, but at the same time has been ridiculed by many. The scientifically designed and double blind trials produced more positive responses in those groups of patients who were prayed for, when compared with the control groups. Although the sample was small and the statistical interpretation of the results controversial, there have been many more studies since then that have corroborated in different ways the principal of that pioneer experiment; non local intervention such as prayer can give a positive outcome. Byrd’s work certainly proved to be a catalyst for physicians such as Dossey who was interested in exploring the spiritual questions of medicine within wider parameters beyond the known interaction of mind and body.

The Burrswood Christian Healing Hospital 

In a paper published by the Fetzer Institute in 1993 David Aldridge noted the need to ‘recognize that patience, grace, prayer, meditation, hope, forgiveness and fellowship are as important to many of our health initiatives as medication, hospitalization, incarceration or surgery.' (4)

As I look around and see our overburdened health services and our seeming reliance on drugs and new technology, have we made very much progress in 2014? 


References:
(1) from Kaptchuk, Ted and Michael Croucher, The Healing Arts, BBC Publications, 1986, pp. 26, 37, cited in Michael Mayne, A Year Lost and Found, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987, p. 38.

(2) Viktor Frankl, (1905 to 1997), 1973, p.16, latest edition, Souvenir Press Ltd (April 19, 2004). A 2008 Kindle edition is also available.

(3) Story related by Larry Dossey, in his Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing, Shaftesbury, Dorset, Boston, Massachusetts: Element Books, 2000, p. 53 et. seq. followed by his critical analysis of non local studies and positive responses obtained from non local prayer and healing intentions.

(4) Aldridge, David, Is There Evidence for Spiritual Healing? Advances 9(4): 4(1993) cited in Michael Lerner, Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Approaches to Cancer, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: MIT Press, 1996, Chapter 9 p. 135: an excellent and comprehensive textbook in this field.

Compassionate Healthcare - An NHS in need of healing

My friends and followers will notice that I have been quiet for an unacceptably long period of time. The truth is I have been hiding away to complete a book on depression - hopefully to be out later this year.

But I have to put my head above the parapet to comment on the dreadful events at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. Yes it's in the UK but my comments and thoughts apply equally to the American healthcare systems.
Following the Francis Report on the enquiry into this fiasco, our Prime Minister has called for more compassion in the health system. Whilst it has to be said many health care workers are doing an excellent job, it seems that some nurses and doctors have forgotten how to care for their patients.

It is often said that the physician used to be able to cure rarely but care always. Now it seems that the reverse is the case: he can cure very often but somehow it seems that there is often little room for the caring and the healing…

Michael Mayne, busy parish priest who subsequently became Dean of Westminster Abbey within the Anglican Communion, was well qualified to write about the patient’s perception of healthcare. In his book A Year Lost and Found he describes his experiences and struggle with a debilitating episode of ME, or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, the post-viral fatigue syndrome. Of all the various treatments and advice he received for a condition that is still very little understood, he significantly gives special credit to a certain Dr D, whose particular efficacy in helping him cope with his condition is attributed to his grasp of the inter-relatedness of body and spirit…Mayne wrote:

"he talked and he tested or massaged parts of my body. Sometimes he just talked. He had the great gift of encouragement. He understood that the question ‘How are you?’ is at root a metaphysical question, which is not sufficiently answered with clinical lists and data …but goes to the deepest part of ourselves as the complex and uniquely precious beings we are." 

Mayne tragically died from cancer in 2006, but not before heroically putting the finishing touches to his final book The Enduring Melody. This started as a meditation of his life, but when the cancer struck it became his daily meditations interwoven into an autobiography of his final year. The book is a brave and very thoughtful journal through those last ten months. It culminates in a reflective essay on illness and healing, and the need for a holistic approach.

‘To treat a disease,’ he said: “is to inhibit it and hopefully help the body to destroy it or control it: to treat a patient is to observe, foster, nurture and listen to a life...
In an ideal [health service] it would be good if every doctor and nurse in training would reflect on the mystery of the human being with both the learning of the scientist and the observation and sympathy of the novelist or the poet.” 


This is an adapted extract from my first book Healing This Wounded Earth, where in two prescient chapters I write how the health services lost sight of what I call Soul Medicine, in the rush for latest high tech cures, and how we need to return to this more compassionate health care - for the sake of ourselves and our world ; a world in desperate need of healing.  

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and holistic healthcare

There has been some debate going on in the last week or so about the real cause of that little understood medical condition that used to be called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, ME, or the post-viral fatigue syndrome, and is now more commonly referred to, in Britain anyway, as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In Opinion, in The Times today, David Aaronovitch gives his own take on this. He shares my own scepticism that science must and eventually will find physical explanations for all manner of disease. “There is no medical utopia, and the search for a biological answer to all our problems is a false trail. We humans are more complicated than that,” he writes. And there is no shame in having a “psychosomatic” disorder – it is as real as any other disorder – it is just that the causes are more nebulous and ill-defined.

Now some of the debate here, continued into the letter pages, is around the funding that is available for research into this very real and debilitating condition. I suffered from this condition myself at University many years ago although no name was then given to my complaint. But I do know it was very real for me at the time, and totally incapacitating. Yes research is certainly needed and I agree that there must be a balance between exploring the different potential physical and mental causes.
But those from both sides of the debate would do well to read a small gem of a book, A Year Lost and Found, written by the late Michael Mayne, busy parish priest who subsequently became Dean of Westminster Abbey within the Anglican Communion. He was well qualified to write about ME or CFS and the patient’s perception of healthcare. In his book A Year Lost and Found he describes his experiences and struggle with a debilitating episode of the condition. Of all the various treatments and advice he received he significantly gives special credit to a certain Dr D, whose particular efficacy in helping him cope with his condition is attributed to

“his grasp of the inter-relatedness of body and spirit…he talked and he tested or massaged parts of my body. Sometimes he just talked. He had the great gift of encouragement. He understood that the question ‘How are you?’ is at root a metaphysical question, which is not sufficiently answered with clinical lists and data …but goes to the deepest part of ourselves as the complex and uniquely precious beings we are.”

Mayne tragically died from cancer in 2006, but not before heroically putting the finishing touches to his final book The Enduring Melody. This started as a meditation of his life, but when the cancer struck it became his daily meditations interwoven into an autobiography of his final year. The book is a brave and very thoughtful journal through those last ten months. It culminates in a reflective essay on illness and healing, and the need for a holistic approach. ‘To treat a disease,’ he said:

“is to inhibit it and hopefully help the body to destroy it or control it: to treat a patient is to observe, foster, nurture and listen to a life...In an ideal [health service] it would be good if every doctor and nurse in training would reflect on the mystery of the human being with both the learning of the scientist and the observation and sympathy of the novelist or the poet.”

He was writing of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service but his thoughts are equally relevant in the United States, which is actually ahead of the UK in recognizing the importance of spirituality in healthcare.
Mayne understood only too well that chasm that is so often evident between what the patient actually receives from a short medical consultation and what he is really looking for.
Of course credit should be given for the advances that are being made in medical science, the technological achievements, the surgical and clinical skills, the development of ever more efficacious drugs and the efforts of the very many health care professionals working competently and tirelessly using best knowledge, experience and facilities for the benefit of the patient.
Perhaps more doctors than we realize do understand and practice the philosophy of holistic health care, with due regard to the full impact of body, mind and spirit in considering the ‘wellness’ of the person. Even so it is unlikely that this can often be realistically achieved within the normal time constraints of a busy practice. Nevertheless there is an opportunity here that should not be ignored; indeed we may not be able to ignore it for much longer. I read today that in Britain there will be 80,000 centenarians by 2033, compared with 11,600 in 2009, and the numbers will continue to increase rapidly. As we all live so much longer the financial drain on our health services will become unsustainable if we continue to insist on drugs to cure all our ills. I believe strongly that we need to work towards a far more holistic healthcare, and one also in which we take far more personal responsibility for our well being. How about more yoga, meditation, tai chi, healthier diets, and yes even psychotherapy or mindfulness cognitive behavioural therapy for a start, to help slow us down, relieve hypertension and reduce our cholesterol, sort out our minds, help us cope better with what life throws at us, rather than continuing our national culture of pill-popping for every ill without question and expecting scientific explanation for everything we experience?

(this is developed in some more detail in my book Healing This Wounded Earth, in two comprehensive chapters on The History of Soul Medicine and The Hope of Soul Medicine)

music and healing

I went to see director and choreographer Matthew Bourne's ballet interpretation of Cinderella, music by Prokofiev, the other evening in London, at Sadler's Wells. I enjoyed it. It was typical Matthew Bourne, in the style of his enormously successful Edward Scissorhands, that I saw twice. There was his typical quirky interpretation, this time set in the London Blitz of the Second World War.

But I did not think it had very much soul. Let me explain.

The choreographer Arlene Phillips once said of dance that it engages the brain, the heart, the body and the soul. I can find watching a beautiful ballet an uplifting and spiritual experience. The theme of Michael Mayne’s book Learning to Dance is ‘the dance of life; the dance of the cosmos, of the natural world and of the tiniest particle of matter; the dance of music and paint and words, whereby artists may make journeys into the unknown in order to recapture lost parts of themselves for our mutual healing.’ Shamanic healing rituals certainly involve dance.
This ballet did not for me have that quality, although it was jolly good entertainment.

And I was also reminded that there is a darker side to music, which probably says much about me and the "black dog" that was stalking me at the time I saw Bourne's production.

The psychiatrist Anthony Storr discusses the possible evil powers of music in his book Music and the Mind, citing as one example the music used by the campaigning Hitler to heighten the emotions of the crowd.
Is black metal and death metal music written from wounds and hurts? Is this destructive to the listener? Or does it satisfy some need? Does it in some way harmlessly channel such wounds during a healing process? Storr is confident that ‘Plato and Aristotle were right. Music is a powerful instrument of education which can be used for good or ill,’ and we should, he says, ‘ensure that everyone in our society is given the opportunity of participating in a wide range of different kinds of music.’He refers to Allan Bloom, who expressed an anxiety in his own best selling albeit controversial book The Closing of the American Mind that the popularity of rock music among students was banishing ‘any interest in, or feeling of need for, any other kind of music.’ This is serious, Bloom says, because great music is ‘powerfully educative.’

Don Campbell in The Mozart Effect writes that he looks forward to new knowledge on the use of music in therapy and healing and his hope is that such information ‘may also influence musical performance, composition, and listening tastes, contributing to the development of individuals and fostering a world community more attuned to the healthful and peaceful rhythms of life.’ This he says would indeed be a ‘joyous revolution.’It certainly would be, but sadly most ‘popular’ musicians of today seem to be motivated to write and perform what they think will sell rather than what will be a healing force for good in the world.
And we provide the demand!

Lent, Consolatory ministry and the Wounded Healer

Well my experiment with the cellphone in the bathroom (last post) didn't do anything for me so I am back to the serious today!
We have just had our first Lent group - a house group of 12 people meeting once a week to discuss a theme. This week the subject was Isaiah chapter 40 - Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, says the Lord.
What is comfort? What comfort does God offer us in times of need? Someone mentioned the additional gift of comfort afforded to those who themselves have seen grief, hurt or other affliction and come through it to be able to help others - of course the Wounded Healer.
This reminded me of the consolatory ministry and the healing prose seen in the consolatory literature of the ancient Greeks. Perhaps the earliest example of this was On Grief, written by the Greek academic and philosopher Crantor in the mid fourth century BC. This type of consolation was offered on the occasion of any human misfortune, but seems to have been used particularly to console or heal following the death of a loved one, often a child. The consolatory ministry was built around the belief that by writing about one’s own suffering the author is not only helping himself through his own difficulties but can be in a better position to help others in a similar situation. The soul or spirit was often implicated in this healing process. It reflected the healing vulnerability of the Wounded Healer.
There were many examples of this genre of literature, which developed well into the European Renaissance period of the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. By then people were recognixing that  sorrow, misery, and misfortune could be matters for sympathy - up until then they were too often seen as stemming from sinfulness. Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch, who lived in the fourteenth century, was well known for his self- care and self -analysis. ‘No one’s solace,’ he wrote, ‘penetrates a saddened mind more than that of a fellow sufferer, and therefore the most effective words to strengthen the spirits of the bystanders are those which emerge from the actual torments.’ He quoted from Virgil: ‘Being acquainted with grief, I learn to succor the wretched (Aen. 2.630).’

The consolatory genre surely survives to the present day in the spiritual works of Henri Nouwen and perhaps Michael Mayne, for example. It was only when I read Michael Mayne’s Learning to Dance that I discovered that he had been deeply wounded as a child, when at the age of three his father, with no warning, committed suicide and left his wife and son homeless and very poor. This, Mayne said, left ‘an immense emptiness’ in his life. He was writing a meditation on his life of faith when he learnt that he had cancer. As he struggled with his terminal and painful illness, he completed Enduring Melody,  which became his own beautifully written and moving epitaph. In an addition to Mayne’s obituary in the Times in November 2006, Canon Chris Chivers wrote of Mayne: ‘The letter he wrote to me…was full of down-to-earth wisdom, mixed with deep prayerfulness, and an all-too-rare ability to put himself in the shoes and soul of another. This will surely be the enduring melody of his richly sacrificial ministry.’ Mayne’s meditational books are steeped in wonderful imagery that helps us understand more clearly the ineffable, the God immanent but unknowable. In his vocation as priest he was clearly the very essence of the Wounded Healer to those who received his ministry.

Isaiah 40 raises issues far beyond this and I hope to cover some more in later posts. Do "misery memoirs" come within this consolatory genre I wonder?