Illness to Wellness - Open Evening Report

Nicky Britain, Michael Dixon, Simon Mills, Robert Duggan
Dartington Great Hall, March 28, 2007

This evening meeting was held half way through a conference on the same subject being held at Schumacher College, with all four conference speakers present. Nicky Britain of Exeter University spoke of the change, presently beginning, from a paternalistic model within the health service where doctors are the authority and patients are compliant and not expected to take responsibility or decisions for themselves, to a more patient-centred medicine where the care of our bodies lies crucially with each one of us, and doctors are usually only involved when more severe problems are diagnosed. Michael Dixon of the Kings Fund looked at how this might be facilitated by budgets for local services being in the hands of Practices, which encouraged shared decision making within the service and with patients. He asked how the necessary change of mindset for a fundamentally different, more flexible attitude to personal and community health could occur?

Simon Mills of the Complementary Health Studies, Exeter University suggested that many people are now buying in their own healthcare, and changes are partly led by the population itself, as demand for complementary medicine is now outstripping that for conventional services. People have always held the conviction that there is meaning in illness. It is also common experience that, say, medical herbalism can help people get better more quickly than visiting the doctor.

The final speaker Robert Duggan, an acupuncturist with extensive experience of health care in England and America, and a follower of Ivan Illych, spoke of trusting your own body and its symptoms, paying attention to the first signs of disorder, and helping your body find its own balance. The body is a very powerful and effective healer in its own right, and we could trust it more.

All four spoke of the renewed vision of health that had pervaded the week’s course at the College. Hospitals, for instance, could look very different, providing a much more healing and beautiful environment. We need to end the very reductionist view of health that has been prevalent for the last 400 years.

In answer to questions, all four took very seriously the significance of the power of pharmaceutical companies at the present time, and the need to think of technology and drugs differently. More attention needs to be paid to the healing power of a particular practitioner, doctor or nurse. One member of the audience was able to give an account of the experience of health services in Cuba today, where for many years, there was little access to or reliance on drugs.

The speakers stressed that, in spite of the many difficulties in the National Health Service here, we should value it for the many good things it does offer: a sense of compassion and responsibility for all, and a care that we should not take for granted. The NHS is something precious, and may even now be developing into a fundamentally changed system that is even better.

Summary by Jean Hardy – April ‘07

Schumacher College is part of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and as a charity (company no. 1485560, charity no. 279756). Registered office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, UK.