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It is time for more holistic practices in mental health

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Re: It is time for more holistic practices in mental health

#21

Post by logifail »

aljgz wrote: post #17

It is incredible how bad we are, at the end of the first quarter of 21st century, at having a well planned and executed strategy to improve mental health of people. Compare it to physical health. For instance, everyone is advised to take regular tests (like blood tests). While things can still be improved a lot, this simple proactive measure helps detect many health problems before they cause serious damage. For ment…

> Compare it to physical health. For instance, everyone is advised to take regular tests (like blood tests). While things can still be improved a lot, this simple proactive measure helps detect many health problems before they cause serious damage.

Q: How many people actually take regular blood tests?

Re: It is time for more holistic practices in mental health

#22

Post by jahewson »

vasco wrote: post #16
ungamedplayer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes am tempted to do the math to determine what kind of life we would have if we did everything we were supposed to do.

If you believe in determinism you already are doing everything you were supposed to.

What if it was pre-determined that they would not believe in determinism?

Re: It is time for more holistic practices in mental health

#23

Post by jimkleiber »

aljgz wrote: post #17

It is incredible how bad we are, at the end of the first quarter of 21st century, at having a well planned and executed strategy to improve mental health of people. Compare it to physical health. For instance, everyone is advised to take regular tests (like blood tests). While things can still be improved a lot, this simple proactive measure helps detect many health problems before they cause serious damage. For ment…

I think most cultures have beliefs/norms for the suppression of emotion that influence our health more than we may realize. If we want to optimize for happiness, how do we do so without feeling sadness? Or fear? Anger? If I feel very happy with something, I will probably feel very sad if it is gone, afraid it will leave, angry if it gets taken away.

So I think more than physical health, there are hidden cultural forces that interfere with our desire for emotional health. Heck, we even call it mental health more than emotional health probably because of cultural dislike of "emotion." I won't even go into how attitudes in favor of monogamy may contribute lol.

Re: It is time for more holistic practices in mental health

#24

Post by hansworst »

aljgz wrote: post #17

It is incredible how bad we are, at the end of the first quarter of 21st century, at having a well planned and executed strategy to improve mental health of people. Compare it to physical health. For instance, everyone is advised to take regular tests (like blood tests). While things can still be improved a lot, this simple proactive measure helps detect many health problems before they cause serious damage. For ment…

On the flip side: in some cases there are downsides to regular checkups, in particular false positive diagnoses leading to medical operations causing more harm on a population level than if the checkups hadn’t been done in the first place. Unfortunately our medical practices aren’t always good enough yet where doing early checkups at a large scale actually prevent harm.

Combine this with the sometimes shoddy diagnostics processes in mental health, and suddenly it doesn’t seem too weird to me that we avoid poking too much until people complain themselves. I think that if we were to ask people to fill out every mental health questionnaire that exists, most people would likely test positive for some disorders. But if those symptoms are not causing unmanageable harm in people’s lives, and given the current state of treatments (not nearly always effective), I think we should think twice before subjecting everyone to a list of mental health questionnaires.

Re: It is time for more holistic practices in mental health

#25

Post by can16358p »

I strongly believe we don't have "mental health problems", yet we have a global style of living in "modern society" that is inherently incompatible with the way we evolved: e.g. office-based daily tasks instead of walking and hunting, foods fabricated to stimulate us instead of what we could find in nature, high buildings and cities with sound/light/air pollution instead of a calm, clean nature, always trying to "optimize for time/money" instead of slow living etc. all eventually end us up in a mentally and physically depleted state. The problem is that none of those factors alone have a direct visible effect, but they accumulate together over years, so it's hard to quantify a specific factor in an isolated manner.

As long as we don't change out lifestyle to something simpler fundamentally, I doubt we can really solve problems with any kind of drugs or medical tests etc.

I hope a holistic approach will take us back to who we really are, which would gradually solve our both mental and physical health problems.

Re: It is time for more holistic practices in mental health

#26

Post by byvirtueoff »

It’s also incredibly difficult for people with mental health issues to simply get advice to try to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps” by improving their lifestyle when so much of their mind is working against them.

Combine that with the fact that hyper individualism is a big factor for loneliness, (and social media is a poor man’s substitute for socializing) and with loneliness being one of the biggest factors in poor mental health, what we have is not just people with problematic lifestyles (exercise, diet, sleep, social support, financial health, purpose) but also a life structure (overworking, drinking, shopping, doomscrolling, etc.) which makes it all too easy to fall back into old patterns of a poor lifestyle.

What’s crazy is expecting people with poor mental health to just “fix themselves”. Some may be able to, while others will struggle with it their entire lives without proper support and societal guardrails.

Re: It is time for more holistic practices in mental health

#27

Post by ImHereToVote »

can16358p wrote: post #25

I strongly believe we don't have "mental health problems", yet we have a global style of living in "modern society" that is inherently incompatible with the way we evolved: e.g. office-based daily tasks instead of walking and hunting, foods fabricated to stimulate us instead of what we could find in nature, high buildings and cities with sound/light/air pollution instead of a calm, clean nature, always trying to "opt…

Contemporary systems are an organism to themselves. Guided by natural "artificial" selection. Corporations are like aliens trying to terraform the social landscape so they can survive. I can't image what it will be like when they become even more autonomous.

Re: It is time for more holistic practices in mental health

#28

Post by longerd2 »

> during the 2017 Psychedelic Science meeting in Oakland

I'm personally really interested in studies with psychedelics. E.g. https://episode-study.de for germany.

I feel like they could really help in a lot of mental conditions, especially in a controlled setting with a therapist. Therapy with psychedelics could be like speedrunning therapy! That's what many people claim after their experience at least.

I do also think widespread use of such substances could drastically change our society, which is also good for mental health, presumably.

Re: It is time for more holistic practices in mental health

#29

Post by mihaaly »

Concerning NHS I'd be extatic if they listened to my specific and narrow problem before writing paperwork that they do not read later and I have to tell again someone else in that 15 minutes they allocate for me, that would be a first step in my view towards the dreamland of holistic approaches.

Re: It is time for more holistic practices in mental health

#30

Post by knallfrosch »

can16358p wrote: post #25

I strongly believe we don't have "mental health problems", yet we have a global style of living in "modern society" that is inherently incompatible with the way we evolved: e.g. office-based daily tasks instead of walking and hunting, foods fabricated to stimulate us instead of what we could find in nature, high buildings and cities with sound/light/air pollution instead of a calm, clean nature, always trying to "opt…

100% agree. You need to cook your food. You need to exert energy to move (walk, run, or cycle instead of car.) You need to communicate face-to-face, instead of with a screen. Swimming is such a great feeling that I've never seen someone worry about an email while doing it.

If you drive your car to a desk job where you sit in a zoom meeting all day and then stuff your face with food you bought, you're going to crash and burn. If your "hobbies" involve "Netflix", you've got a problem.

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