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Lewis Mehl-Madrona: The difficulty of practicing narrative medicine
I look at the stories that people hold about their lives that sometimes work against them. I tell the story of a driven man whom I warned 25 years earlier that he might drop dead if he didn't take a break, and discover that he did, in his fifties. I discuss the problems we face in medicine, how to help people change their stories that are leading them toward illness. This is one of the hallmarks of narrative medicine. 1  |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Talking to Animals; what's the point?
We reflect on the winter buffalo hunt ceremonies of the Northern Plains and the ways in which humans communicated with animals, negotiating with them to cooperate in being hunted. This leads us to modern day attempts to communicate with animals, including studies from Northern Arizona University that decode the meaning of prairie dog chirps and efforts to talk to the great apes. We ask what is the point? What do learn? 2 |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Defining Coyote Psychotherapy
In the recent meetings of the Institute for Psychiatric Services in San Francisco, Barbara Mainguy and I presented material on how we work with psychosis. We are exploring what it is that we do, and we know that it is inspired by indigenous elders, that it is centered on the body, which registers our traumas and stresses, that we are wedded to the idea of story occurring in a social context so that we are embedded with others. 1 |
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Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Bringing Magic Back to a Muggle World
We need to bring magic back into our modern, materialistic world. While ultimately magic will have a scientific description, it will probably take place at the quantum level, which few of us can understand. Therefore, we are left to marvel at the way energy moves matter, at how our participation in each others electrical fields of our hearts creates coherence and even health and well-being. We are left to wonder and awe. 1 |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: How we treat is more important than the treatment!
The way we relate to people is more important than what we do in both medicine and psychiatry. Randomized, clinical trials of the drug, citalopram, for geriatric depression, for example, showed that where a patient got treated mattered more than what drug they received. The response rate to citalopram varied from 16% to 82% among 15 hospitals. The time is nigh to improve the human elements in what we do be more helpful. 2 |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: To Do and Not To Be
I reflect upon the importance of doing, what is called behavioral activation. In order to change, we need to do things differently, and not just think about doing things differently. Unfortunately, conventional medicine has supported a narrative which tells us that we do not have to make an effort to change our behavior, so people who are depressed or anxious don't believe they need to do anything. We need to change this. |
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Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 7 of Australia 2013: Hearing Voices and Mind Mapping
Day 7 found us working with the Prahran Mission's Hearing Voices Victoria about indigenous and narrative approaches to voices. We demonstrated the use of what I call mind mapping with the various voices we hear inside our minds. This technique works for everyone, voice hearers or not, for we all hear talk inside our heads, the question being where we think it's coming from. In mind mapping we identify the talk and talkers. 1 |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 4 of Australia 2013: Indigenous Energy Medicine 2
During the fourth day of our Australian cross-cultural journey we continued to present our form of indigenous (Cherokee) bodywork/osteopathy and energy medicine ("doctoring"). The second day focused on how anyone can feel energy differences in other people and within those areas of energy differences, can find points that need rubbing or holding. We showed how these intuitively discoverable points are the same as TCM. 1 |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 3 of Australia 2013: Indigenous Energy Medicine
On day 3 of our cross-cultural journey in Australia we are at a camp where we are sharing Native North American concepts of energy medicine, particularly Cherokee bodywork/osteopathy and energy medicine and psychology (aka "doctoring"). We discover again how similar these concepts and practices are to those of indigenous Australia and New Zealand and how all people heal through touching the body and its energy. 1 |
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Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 1 of Australia 2013: The Autobiographical Narrative
Each year we make a cross-cultural tour to Australia, though one of our Coyote colleagues comes twice a year to make an impact on incorporating culture in health care for aboriginal people. This year we began with a lecture in a writing conference on the topic of the autobiography in which I describe my experience of writing Coyote Medicine. I finish with a description of what has been accomplished in five years of coming. 1 |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: NIMH and its Biologic Emphasis
I respond to Dr. Thomas Insel's blog about his views of the top ten advances for mental health for 2012. What saddens me is that all of these advances are heavily biological and that biological medicine hasn't really succeeded very well in improving our mental health. While these advances are very interesting, I argue that what we need is more understanding of how our social relationships form our brains and behavior. 1 |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: The High Cost of Medically Unexplained Symptoms
I write about how the search for the diagnosis for medically unexplained symptoms is an important aspect of what is bankrupting our health care system. We have to solve this problem for manage costs no matter what health care system we have. I acknowledge that some diseases are missed and that some diseases are yet to be found, but suggest that we are much better at findings serious and life threatening illnesses than before. |
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Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Narrative Concepts
I attempt to say what a narrative is. It is a telling of something to someone by someone. It may reflect the basic means by which our brains work, the result of a co-evolution of brain and story to allow us to recall the myriad of details necessary for negotiating a social life with the 500 people whom we are capable of knowing. Its shortest form consists of two action clauses that can be sequenced and one orienting clause. |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 9 of the Australian Journey 2012
Today is Day 9 of the Australian Cultural Exchange Journey for 2012. Related to the constant, driving rain, we mostly talked today We talked about the health care system to which we wished to move and how to get there, especially through changing the socialization of students and giving them new stories about what to expect from others. |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 8 of the Australian Journey 2012
This is Day 8 of the Australian cross cultural adventure. Today we went to the heart of the community where the elders from the Northern Territories demonstrated some of their ceremonies and procedures to the community. That included the burning ceremony for healing pain, the smoking ceremony for purification, and spear throwing. On the way back to the island, I interviewed a patient advocate from Western Australia. |
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Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Medical Writing: the Healing Power of Narrative
This article represents the start of my annual trek to Australia to work with an aboriginal cooperative in Southeastern Australia. The goal is to help them to incorporate their culture into their health care and other human services through cultural exchange with aboriginal North Americans, aboriginal people from the North of Australia where culture is less disrupted, and others from the area. More to come of my 2 weeks! |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Beyond Narrative Therapy: Day 11 of the Australian Journey
On Day 11, we engaged in dialogue about the narrative therapy of Michael White, which is what most people in Australia and the United States index, when we say narrative practices, and the narrative practices of indigenous people. While we deeply respect Michael White's contributions to psychology and humanity, we present him as one branch on a tree of narrative in which indigenous people live in the trunk and the roots. 1 |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Imaging and doing are not as different as they sound
Contemporary neuroscience has shown us that imagining an act and performing an act are virtually the same. We can strength our muscles almost as much by imagining exercising as by exercising. If mind is so powerful, why aren't we harnessing it for the good. I fear that mostly we allow it to run for the bad, imagining ourselves in any number of dire straights and illnesses, instead of imagining ourselves hale as we should. 1 |
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Lewis Mehl-Madrona: The Narrative Interview: Day 3 of the Australian Journey
Today finds us on Day 3 of our Australian cross-cultural journey. Our focus today is on the narrative interview. How would we interview people if our focus was to elicit their story instead of making a conventional DSM diagnosis. I interview a woman who has been suffering for 12 years and who has finally been offered an antidepressant medication. I show how her suffering can be rendered intelligible through narrative. 1 |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Clinic Restructuring
I work part-time in a community mental health center in New York. Recently New York's Office of Mental Health has restructured clinical services. I write about what that has meant for quality of care, which inevitably goes down. I argue that this is inevitable in a "fee-for-service" system. I argue that the alternative is to pay physicians to care for panels of people and to do the best job as they see fit for these people. |
Dr. Kathleen Albertson, L. Ac., PhD: What health treatment system treats multiple symptoms simultaneously? Acupuncture and herbal medicine holds secrets to returning you to your optimum vitality. Do you want to feel dramatically physically and emotionally better? Then Acupuncture and herbal medicine is for you. Here's 4 Reasons Why: 1 |
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Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Explanatory Plurarlism
I ask the question, what if all knowledge existed in the form of stories and all stories were true? If we practiced in this manner, as advocated by Uncle Albert, an aboriginal elder, how would we act? The notion of explanatory pleuralism argues that explanatory stories on any particular level do not have to relate to any other level of explanation; rather they must correspond to the level of which they are explaining. |
Vijayaraghavan Padmanabhan: Health Care Needs a Fundamentally New Approach
Health of man is considered to have the components of physical, mental and social well-being. The state of spiritual health of an individual being intangible is left out. This has perforce reduced the consideration of man as a sum of parts, whose malfunction lead to a diseased state. Recent advances in psychology and psychoneuroimmunology now suggest that spiritual health needs to be rightfully included in Health Care matters. |
Dr. Kathleen Albertson, L. Ac., PhD: Recent Outbreaks of Whooping Cough Reported: Acupuncture and Herbal Treatment -
Whooping cough (pertussis) is an opportunistic infection that affects the lungs. Outbreaks occur every three to four years and are seriously affect children.
Acupuncture and Chinese herbs are effective and safe treatment to provide full recovery for your little one. Yes, the acupuncture is gentle! Integrating Western and Eastern medicine is the ideal protocol for pertussis. Learn the thress stages of this disease! |
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Kathie Albertson: Acupuncture Improves Thyroid Function!
Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine is effective in treating thyroid disorders. Read how! |
Vijayaraghavan Padmanabhan: The Philosophy of Mind-Body-Spirit Medicine
Mind-body-spirit medicine allows the unknown to be tackled by the body's built-in mechanisms. Thus the therapeutic potential of mind-body-spirit medicine is unlimited, while the purely biomedical approach confines itself to limits set by the logical mind. 1 |
Kathie Albertson: A Western and Eastern View of PMS Treatment
Western medicine accepts PMS as a "normal" occurrence. Its time to bridge the gap between Western and Eastern medicine in the interest of improving patient care. This article describes how tradtional Chinese medicine addresses premenstrual syndrome. |
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Dr. Kathleen Albertson, L. Ac., PhD: The 5 Myths of Acupuncture: Do you Know them?
Does acupuncture hurt? Do I need to continue treatment forever? Is ther physiological change in the body?
This article dispels some of your questions and puts to rests the myths surrounding this 5000-year-old holistic health science. Yes, acupuncture has been in existence for 5000 years; compared to western medicine that is just over 200 years old.
It has stood the test of time. |
Kathie Albertson: What health treatment system treats multiple symptoms simultaneously? Acupuncture and herbal medicine holds secrets to returning you to your optimum vitality. Do you want to feel dramatically physically and emotionally better? Then Acupuncture and herbal medicine is for you. Here's 4 Reasons Why: 1 |
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Coyote Healing Excerpt from Chapter 4, The Medicine Wheel
This is an excerpt from my book, Coyote Healing: Miracles from Native America. It's about the medicine wheel. |
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Articles For Tag "Medicine" |
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