Trust me I'm a patient

Homeopath DAVID READMAN puts the case for listening to patients’ ‘early warning systems’

MISTRUST, or even blame, is the situation facing mothers whose children become inexplicably ill for no measurable medical reason.

With no scientific explanation, the mothers were alleged to have harmed their own children to gain attention themselves. The publicity over these tragic cases, labelled "Munchausen’s Syndrome By Proxy", highlights the dangers of a medical system relying on scientific proof that someone is ill.

Although these appaling injustices are extreme examples of an ‘expert’ deciding the fate of a patient they never met, the underlying assumption for all of us is that if illness cannot be explained by scientific tests, then the patient may not be truthful.

No wonder there is often fear of experts in white coats along with the fear of needles and fear of drug side effects.

The authority figure’s science requires a subconscious distrust of what is said by the patient: not a good basis for a healthy healing relationship! Scares over expert opinions in IVF, MMR, child abuse and Munchausen’s originate from the experts’ own opinions of the patients and the public: why trust someone who won’t trust you if your illness doesn’t fit a neat diagnosis?

Except for a tiny minority, when someone feels ill they really feel it! A small number can even be so reassured by expert judgement they actually feel better when told there is nothing wrong. Some are highly susceptible to every influence, seeming to suffer when no one else does, but the real nature of their complaint is over-sensitivity. Scientific tests would show nothing measurable, so the patient’s description of illness might well be discredited, and can result in a lifetime of anti-depressants. Which is not dealing with their underlying problem.

Because everyone is an individual, so is every illness, with no two people suffering exactly the same, even if a diagnosis tries to squeeze people into the same disease ‘box’. Giving a name to an illness doesn’t make it the same for everyone, so it’s not surprising that some people return from medical tests suspected of making it up: "There’s nothing wrong with you, but we can do more tests".

Worse still, if you are not aware of making it up, and actually believe you don’t feel well then maybe you have a subconscious desire to make it up. This is the vague diagnosis of Munchausen’s syndrome - which most of us could probably be squeezed into at some time.

Unless faced with an acutely life-threatening illness, where modern science excels, more people are turning to holistic/energetic forms of healing and medicine, in which the patient is regarded as the expert of the sensations they feel.

This involves the practitioner listening non-judgementally: sensations felt by the patient may have no physically explainable cause, but are real to the patient and usually early warnings of actual pathology at some point in the future. Treating these now, which holistic therapies can do, reverses the body’s decline into more serious illness.


WANT TO KNOW MORE?
David Readman BSc, RSHom is a homeopath at Charlestown Natural Health Centre, near St Austell. Call 01726 70088.