AMEN 2009 Student Conference: The Ministry of Healing

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

Allen Lloyd

The Essential Knowledge, Mind Cure

Improving Emotional Intelligence, and the subtitle of it is Mind Cure, which is actually the chapter in Ministry of Healing that deals with these issues.

There's also a two-volume series written by Ellen White that's very useful called Mind, Character, and Personality.

And this is the first volume of Mind, Character, and Personality.

Although it's page 3, it's actually the first page of her writings.

The introduction is the first 2 pages, but it says, to deal with minds is the greatest work ever committed to men.

And this statement has been an encouragement to me.

When we're going through residential depression recovery programs, and I'm having to do 20 different exhaustive workups on people who are severely depressed, and are on multiple medications, and have lots of stories behind their depression.

An associate of mine who works for me, Dr.

Miller, will come by in the middle of that and say, I bet you wish you could see a chest pain now, don't you?

And he'll make little quips like that to try to see what my reaction would be, because it is a heavy burden that is being placed.

But At the end of that session, I can tell you I'm very glad that I stuck it out because indeed the changed lives that result are worth all of the, really all of those burdens and more.

And it's not just me that has to deal with those minds.

No matter what line of work you're in, you're going to have to deal with minds as well.

And thus, it behooves us to understand how the brain works.

The condition of the mind affects the health to a far greater degree than many realize.

Many of the diseases from which men suffer are the result of mental depression.

Heart disease, for instance, and even heart attack is more likely, particularly in men with depression.

But in both men and women, if they have a heart attack and they have depression, they're much more likely to have a second MI.

In fact, their mental health is more important than whether they're on any heart medicine at all after their heart attack.

And so that's why it's recommended now that if anyone has had a heart attack, they get screened for their mental health, because if they have depression, that's going to be a significant determinant of an early death.

We now know that cancer death is more likely in those with depression.

Same tissue type, same spread to vital organs, how long the person lives often is related to whether their mental health component.

Suicide is still in the top 10 causes of death in this country.

It's the number 8 cause of death in the United States.

Over 30, 000 people wiped out due to suicide every year in this country.

And of course, the primary reason for suicide is depression.

If you take the depression component away, you'll take away many of those suicide deaths.

And if you take away the mental health problems in total, you really take away all of those suicide deaths because they're all a mental health issue of 1 type or another.

I mentioned asthma, I mentioned headache, but even premature disability, whether you end up in a nursing home or not, has more to do with your mental health when you age than even your physical health.

The more depression you have, the greater the bouts, the more that hippocampus shrinks down and the more depression results.

And you have a much more likely, greater likelihood of returning to a previous addiction as well when you're under depression.

And that's just some of the diseases that have been well-documented in the medical literature to result.

She goes on to say, grief, anxiety, discontent, remorse, guilt, distrust, all tend to break down the life forces and to invite decay and death.

Then she says this, disease is sometimes produced and is often greatly exaggerated by what?

She says many are lifelong invalids who might be well if they only thought so.

Then she says this amazing thing, Many imagine that every slight exposure will cause illness.

And the evil effect is produced because it is what?

Now this is different than the placebo effect.

She also talks about the placebo effect that's well known in the medical literature.

The placebo effect is if you are given something and you think it's going to help you, it actually has a likelihood of helping you whether it has anything active in it or not.

This has been shown even with, you know, certain creams that are being used for male pattern baldness.

They'll give a cream that has no potential at all to help with male pattern baldness And in about 25% of individuals, they'll start to grow hair.

And so you have to compare it with the others.

And that's what we call the placebo effect.

That's why in clinical trials, we always have to see whether it's better than placebo.

And by the way, that's what's very important in regards to mental health cures.

A lot of the counseling, in fact, I was talking about this just at lunchtime today with some of the people I am with.

A lot of the counseling that is being taken place in this country today are utilizing therapies that have never been shown to be superior to taking a placebo.

In other words, the FDA would never approve them because they're not superior to placebo therapy.

But yet those therapies are being practiced because people learned them as part of their schooling and really there needs to be a paradigm shift that's occurring in the psychological literature in regards to what is actually helpful.

And fortunately that paradigm shift is starting to occur.

I was talking to the head of the psychiatric or psychology department at Baylor University not long ago and he mentions that we don't teach Freud, we don't teach Erickson, we don't teach Rogers, we don't teach Jung to any of our psychology students because those theories have been shown not to be effective.

And so we're just teaching them therapies that have been shown to be effective, that are evidence-based.

And I said, so they might never hear about Freud, taking your psychology classes?

They said, Absolutely, they might never hear about it.

It says the only place that we put them in is we have a course, it's an optional course called the History of Psychology.

And so we'll go into that as part of a historical basis, but as part of that we will debunk their theories, because their theories have been shown not to be successful.

And so as many of our education, or some of our educational institutions are starting to take that paradigm shift.

And of course cognitive behavioral therapy, which I've been talking about, is far superior than taking a placebo in treating depression and anxiety and a number of other mental health problems.

But this is different than the placebo effect.

What she's talking about here in this last sentence is called the Nocebo effect.

In fact, they'll do it with chemotherapy.

They give chemotherapy to a cancer patient, and then they'll give sham chemotherapy to a cancer patient.

And they will tell the people, because they're not sure, the caregiver's not sure which 1 that patient's going to end up with or what they're getting, but they will tell that caregiver that if you get the chemotherapy, you're going to get nauseated, you're going to vomit, and your hair's going to fall out, and you're going to feel terrible.

And a significant percentage of those getting the sham chemotherapy get nauseated, they vomit, and their hair comes out.

Not near as high as it is for the chemotherapy, but what's happening here?

Many imagine that every slight exposure will cause illness and the evil effect is produced because it is what?

And so if you think something bad is going to happen, it can often be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And it can indeed happen just because you thought it.

This is the next sentence she says, or next paragraph in the book Mind Cure.

Courage, hope, faith, sympathy, love, promote health, and what else?

Courage, hope, faith, sympathy, and love.

We are getting some of the evidence of altruism, you know, I talked about yesterday the medical studies on altruism showing that it actually helps mental health.

That's the agape love is what they're really studying there.

But there's a wide open field for those of you that want to think about doing studies or maybe you're working on a master's or a PhD.

It's a wide open field in regards to looking at these other things like faith and hope and courage and sympathy.

A contented mind, a cheerful spirit is health to the body and strength to the soul.

A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine.

She then quotes the Bible, Proverbs 17, 22.

By the way, what's the rest of that verse say, do you remember?

You know there was an identical twin study on depression.

The ones that experienced depression have 2% to 4% more bone mineral density loss per year than the other identical twin with no depression.

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The Essential Knowledge, Mind Cure

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