Chapter 7 - Treaters and Healers

Abstract

As the health care system evolves, treatment methodology must be reconciled with models of health and illness that are consonant with scientific progress. Brain science points to the importance of chemical processes and structural configurations that may underlie the behaviors and affects associated with mental disorders, in a dynamic and constantly changing milieu in balance with the external environment. At an elementary level, genes turn on and off in response to a variety of intrinsic and extrinsic forces, impacting on health, state of mind, and adaptive capacities. Beneath or outside of conscious awareness, memory shapes complex patterns of behavior while the conscious mind seeks to contain, manage, modulate, and adapt. All of this takes place against the backdrop of a constantly changing social environment that supports, threatens, and challenges body and mind to maintain health, survive and thrive. Somewhere within this dynamic complex the impairment of mental health that we term illness originates, exerts influence, and either waxes or wanes depending on circumstances. One of the circumstances is the presence of caregivers within the environment of the sufferer: but one more influence among many, seeking to exert a palliative influence. The challenge is to identify what has gone awry and set the forces in motion that will restore or improve health.