Something I need to know more about…
So, I’ve registered for something new. I will tell you the what and the why.
I teach Herbal Therapeutics and Clinical Medicine at The School of Herbal Medicine. My idea in joining these two modules together over 6 years was in order to go through the pathophysiology of each condition, describe the orthodox treatment, and then go into more detail about how we approach and treat patients who present with these conditions and/or symptoms at the same time.
This works really well except for one area.
And that area is mental health.
Yes, we did touch on it briefly during our training, but it seemed mainly to encourage us to view anything other than ‘low mood’ as something that should be referred to a patient’s GP.
Notwithstanding the fact that our patient’s safety is our first concern, and that we should not be diagnosing complex mental health issues, or encouraging a patient on anti-psychotic medication to come off it etc., I have always been of the opinion that medicinal herbs always have something to offer any patient, even those with ‘incurable’ conditions.
Yes, I know I am not a trained counsellor, or a therapist, or psychoanalyst, but it is a poor show if a patient comes to me with a physical problem who is also on a mix of anti-depressants or other mental health supportive medications and I am not confident in my approach.
We studied the contraindications of SSRIs, and MAOIs, etc, etc., and the different questionnaires we could present to our patients to reveal how depressed they might actually be. But this is a very superficial understanding of a problem that is widespread and increasing, and I ought to know more.
So I have registered for an MSc in Mental Health Science.
I know it has absolutely nothing whatever to do with herbal medicine, but I hope and believe it will help me understand some of my patients better and what they are going through. The research section of the MSc looks especially interesting.
About 30 years ago I did a year-long course with the OU which involved a mental-health-linked project. I interviewed a manic depressive who had been in an institution but had then been released ‘into the community’. The large house she lived in had several patients who suffered from different varieties of mental health problems, the manager was an ex nurse who had taken great pains to document the progress of each person.
In her office the manager went through the drug regime of each individual, and in every single case the medication they had been on while in a mental health hospital and decreased steadily during the time they had been under her care. She had provided a small family unit where they had cookery lessons, and she made sure they had a fresh home-cooked diet.
I am not trying to make all this over-simplistic. On the other hand, I feel that knowing more about mental health issues and the myriad of drugs that are used to treat them will help my understanding about what some of my patients are facing.
Has anybody else studied mental health issues? Any constructive comments will be useful…
