Salutogenesis— the origins of health. What creates health and wellbeing when we are faced with life’s inevitable stressors? This is the question I am most interested in. Some families I work with are vibrant and full participants in life even though a parent or child has a disability. I became curious, what are the unique performance patterns of those families compared with families with similar circumstance but who are crippled by those same life events?
Antonovsky asked this question over 6 decades ago….he began to understand that if we continued to study and look for disability we would find more disability. He posed a simple yet profound question: What if we looked for wellness instead? What if we identified the active ingredients of wellbeing? What if we could distill the variables that generate a sense of coherence in the face of challenges to our sense of order and solidness? I have become an activist for this theory.
I am a seeker of innovative practices and like-minded individuals who share my passion to unconceal the crystals of deep and permanent wellbeing for children and families.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
One in four Americans suffer from mental illness. Incidence of autism has risen to 1 in every 88 children, as high as 1 in every 51 male children. Approximately 16% of our children have ADHD. Sensory processing difficulties are increasingly creating family impairment. Cancer and Alzheimer’s scare us.
These statistics can be frightening, and they do tell part of the story. But it is only part of the story. Our brains preferentially focus on news and information that is scary and potentially threatening to us. This tendency was selected for by evolution to help us survive in a dangerous world. But the complete picture also includes lots of breakthroughs in health and wellness, and the overall trend is up and up.
More and more, practitioners are being guided by solid research in working with their patients. Babies are able to survive at increasing early gestational ages. Our elders live longer, and contrary to popular mythology, age with increasing levels of wellness and participation. Is the glass of health half full or empty? How do you feel about mental illness and how are those views influenced by your ability to understand the condition? To find meaning in day-to-day activities? To manage your family’s needs? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not underestimating the stress of raising a child with a disability. Instead, I am suggesting there is much we can do to reduce the stress associated with disability. Stress and disability are highly interconnected. Stress creates secondary disability and exacerbates the primary disabling factors. Mental health concerns become mental illness when there is decreased participation and stress. So what to do?
Get out of the disability box, and think positively.
It’s time we turn away from a disability model and create a wellness model. Aristotle said “no great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” What strengths do we have? Children with ADHD have a lot of energy. Individuals with autism are often able to focus on details and amass deep expertise on a subject of interest. Those individuals who have anxiety commonly are hypersensitive and, as a result, attending to and aware of sensory information in their environment others overlook.
The overriding message of this blog post is this: There is no normal. The traditional medical model of normal on the one hand, and disease, dysfunction, and disability on the other hand, is a myth. And this myth is harming our children and our families.
The goal of our health system ought not to be to find treatments to get patients closer to some mythical “normal”. Instead, we must look at each person as an individual, and find ways to leverage and maximize their strengths, and work around, compensate for, and support their areas of weakness. We must use the growing body of scientific research to inform our recommendations. And wherever possible, use technology, which is developing at an exponential rate, to help individuals optimize their gifts.
Not one of our historic agents of change had a ‘normal’ nervous system. I propose it is time to create models of wellness that conceptualize health and wellbeing as an abundance of resources, the capacity to live an energized life, a celebration of uniqueness. I hope to convince you of this path to wellness in this blog. Ironically, it is through honoring our uniqueness that we become able to see our commonality with others within humanity. Walpole said “The world is tragic to those who feel and comic to those who think”. Thomas Moore said “it is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed.”
Given that we’re all a little mad, and there is no normal, the more important question is: How do we contribute and experience a sense of wellbeing in the face of life’s inevitable disease and disability? The key is to be in (and create) communities that are kind, inclusive, and honor everyone’s uniqueness. That’s the only game in town worth playing.
To comment, or see more of my reflections on health, wellbeing, and quality of life, visit my blog at innov8wellbeing.blogspot.com.
