How Compassion Can Help Us Heal
Tautoko - waiho I te toipoto, kaua I te toiroa.
This is a beautiful Maori whakatauki, or proverb, which means let us keep close together, not far apart. But given we’ve been in Level 4 lockdown for the last five weeks, with at least another two weeks at Level 3, it’s been physically impossible for us to stay close together, which makes it hard to offer one another support. For many people this will be having major effects on their health and well being. We need to treat each other with kindness and compassion as the community opens up again; it is more powerful than you may think.
Last week I listened to a podcast – The Healing Power of Compassion with Dr Julian Abel, a recently retired palliative care consultant, and co-leader of the Frome Project. The Frome Project aimed to end loneliness and improve health in the small English town by building community connection and providing compassionate alternatives to medical intervention. One GP Dr Helen Kingston was instrumental. When she started working in a large practice she wanted to find a way to make sure care was coordinated, there was a good exchange of information between practice members, and at the same time (realising that a doctor’s role is more than just drug intervention) wanted to find a way for people to feel supported by their community. She employed someone to start a community development programme from within the medical centre; this created a way of connecting community resource to what happens in the medical practice. It was extremely effective! Emergency hospital admissions dropped by 30%, along with improved quality of life scores, health outcomes, and costs. People even started moving there because it simply became such a friendly town. Given we live in a small community, we have a big opportunity to implement similar initiatives to Waiheke in order to improve the health and wellbeing of our people!
So what does “compassionate alternatives to medical intervention” actually mean? They aren’t asking people to stop taking their meds, rather saying that medical treatment when combined with compassion and positive social relationships dwarves the effectiveness of medical treatment alone. When we think about what is most important in life, positive human interaction and relationships are extremely high up on the list, and compassion is a basis for these relationships to exist. Compassion and kindness contributes to an increase in Oxytocin hormone, also known as the “love drug” because it gives you that warm fuzzy feeling, as well as boosting endorphins – yes it actually changes our biochemistry!! This helps to lower stress and anxiety, decreases ones sensation of pain, and therefore has a profound impact on health and longevity. Arguably the traditional medical world focusses too much on objective parameters such as blood tests, and not enough on subjective ones such as joy and reasons for living, so what they were doing in Frome found a way to merge the two, with great success.
To give you an example, a woman named Cathy was diagnosed with a very severe form of acute Rheumatoid Arthritis, and was wheelchair bound within just 3 weeks. She was a businesswoman with a dog and two kids, but didn’t know a lot of people around her very well. This illness devastated her, and she turned to her doctor to get a sense of hope that this wouldn’t be her life from now on. Aside from treating her medically, the doctor referred her to a “health connector”- someone who is trained in motivational interviewing but not a health professional. The health connector recommended she be around people going through a similar thing so she knows she’s not stuck. She attended a self-management group at the medical centre, went to pain management sessions, exercise sessions, and eventually into the community where she was connected to an incredible wealth of people. Cathy went from someone being relatively isolated and focused to being someone deeply engaged in the community, she made friends for life, and was comforted knowing that they were there for her and vice versa. Her life was transformed, not only did she regain her health (large improvement in pain and mobility), she regained her happiness also. The combination of the medical treatment and the support network transformed her life, and gave her a reason for living. You could look at her illness as a blessing in disguise as it made her realise what was important to her and what made her happy.