Guest post: Focused Prayer Works Where Drugs Fail

This guest post comes from Robert Clarke, of Florida. It touches on an issue facing too many parents; eager diagnosis and over-medication. Often there are non drug based solutions to deal with challenges facing caring parents as Robert Clarke illustrates.

Dr Ray Moynihan of Australia,  an award-winning journalist, author, video-maker and academic researcher with a global reputation, has been concerned about over diagnosis and over medication for some years now, producing many videos on the topic. At a friend’s book launch a few months ago he spoke of how “widening the diagnosis” was allowing normal childhood behaviour to be used as criteria for prescribing medication to control ADHD. The short video can been seen here. It made me stop and think.

Focused Prayer Works Where Drugs Fail  

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Robert B. Clark| 3 Comments

There are some things you just know are wrong. The mass drugging of children is one of those things, at least for me. Three million American school children take Ritalin or similar drugs daily so they can avoid being distracted…and distracting others…in the classroom. That’s 20 times as many drugged children in America as 30 years ago.

This past Sunday the New York Times ran an opinion piece called Ritalin Gone Wrong by L. Alan Sroufe, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development.

Dr. Sroufe’s 40-year professional study of this phenomenon, and his well reasoned and calmly presented results, are already drawing angry fire from proponents of the drugs.

Here are some of his findings about these drugs and their sad failure:

• When given to children over long periods of time, they neither improve school achievement nor reduce behavior problems. The drugs can also have serious side effects, including stunting growth.

• To date, no study has found any long-term benefit of attention-deficit medication on academic performance, peer relationships or behavior problems, the very things we would most want to improve.

• The large-scale medication of children feeds into a societal view that all of life’s problems can be solved with a pill and gives millions of children the impression that there is something inherently defective in them.

• The illusion that children’s behavior problems can be cured with drugs prevents us as a society from seeking the more complex solutions that will be necessary. Drugs get everyone — politicians, scientists, teachers and parents — off the hook. Everyone except the children, that is.

During my own 25+ years as a teacher and school administrator I saw more than my share of behavior problems among children of all ages, many of them related to focus problems.

I remember one exasperated 4th grade teacher bringing me an even more exasperated 9 year old. For most kids it’s at least a little sobering to find yourself in the Principal’s office. As he began to settle down and verbalize what was really bothering him, I remember thinking that if I had to face the problems he faced every day, I wouldn’t be able to focus either. There was nothing inherently wrong with him; he was, like many of us, facing very vexing circumstances and in need of some help sorting it out. He was only 9 and assigning a drug-based solution would have been nothing short of cruel.

His parents didn’t want to use drugs, so we forged a plan that would provide a greater sense of peace for him at home and at school. This wasn’t easy and there were further bumps in the road, but things improved over the long haul. The focus and control issues were gradually eased by an effective school/home partnership….and finally resolved. It took a long time and a lot of hard work.

Pills can’t do that. It seems easier to apply a short-term chemical solution than to find and solve the real problem. But in the long run, as Dr. Sroufe has confirmed, drugs are not a solution, and their unchecked use can create a huge local and national burden for us all.

Many parents are finding solutions to children’s attention/behavior problems through focused Christian prayer. This prayer has a Bible-based focus, but it can be employed by people with no prior Biblical knowledge and no current religious orientation.

Here’s an example from spirituality.com. It’s an article with a great title. Check it out……..“Help! My child is out of control!”

Guest post: Spirituality -> better mental health

This post comes from KEITH WOMMACK.  Keith is a blogger, Christian Science practitioner and teacher, musician, and step-dad. He is the media and legislative liaison for Christian Science in Texas. He quotes Dr. Thomas Curry, a licensed psychotherapist in Texas;  ”the brain is an object of thought, and not the thinker.”  Now, that’s something to think about!

While promoting her role in the new Lars von Trier film, Melancholia, Kirsten Dunst recently revealed that she has experienced depression. In the film, Dunst plays the role of a woman named Justine who suffers severe mental illness.

Dunst’s admission is yet another celebrity disclosure. Carrie Fisher, Angelina Jolie, and Christina Ricci have all shared similar stories. Yet, there is hope for these women and for everyone.

Weeks ago, while in Durham, North Carolina, I attended a news briefing where the Wave III Baylor Religion Survey was unveiled. The survey confirmed what I have been discovering: Improved mental health is found through greater spiritual awareness.

Before the press conference, I had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Paul Froese, associate professor of sociology at Baylor University. Froese was part of the research team that studied the connection between mental health and spirituality. He was also one of the participants who shared the survey’s findings.

Froese explained that respondents in the study on mental health, who have strong beliefs about their relationship with God, “have significantly better mental health.”  He said the survey discovered, as well, that those who attend religious services regularly have the lowest reported number of mental health issues.

This study seems to mirror what I have witnessed in my healing ministry for the past 28 years. I have found that how we think affects how we live. This is why it is imperative that spiritual reasoning, prayer, and religious attendance be recognized for the healing impacts they have on our well-being.

Many individuals suffer needlessly from obsessive-compulsive disorders, social anxiety, stress, and panic attacks. According to a recent study, more American adults are reporting being disabled by the symptoms of anxiety, depression, or emotional difficulties.

The report, published September 22nd in the American Journal of Public Health, found that people who said they could not accomplish daily tasks or engage in social and leisure activities because of a mental illness jumped from 2 percent in 1999 to 2.7 percent in 2009. The increase amounts to almost 2 million more people disabled by mental challenges in the past decade. As well, loved ones of the mentally ill often deal silently with their fears, frustrations, sorrows, and guilt. Fortunately, we are learning that help is available. And prayer and education can be just the medicines they need.

If spirituality is indeed a key to better mental health, why? I believe it’s because we are created as spiritual beings, first and foremost. And until we learn more about our spiritual natures and the divine laws that govern our minds and bodies, we will not see real and lasting improvements.

It has long been believed that the brain is the cause of consciousness, and as such is what rules mental health. Yet, physicians and researchers are beginning to join those in the spiritual healing practices in accepting that things are not always what they appear to be.

Recently, during a meeting about spirituality’s role in mental health, Dr. Thomas Curry, a licensed psychotherapist in Texas, told me that research is now showing that the brain changes according to one’s thought. He explained, “This phenomena is called neuroplasticity. What makes this interesting is that if the brain directs consciousness, one would think that as the brain changes, consciousness changes. Yet, we know for a fact that consciousness can change first, and then the brain follows suit by re-connecting, or circumventing certain neural pathways. This implies that the brain is an object of thought, and not the thinker.”

This certainly coincides with what I am learning. I find that prayer impacts health because, as radical as it sounds, thought is the engine that essentially forms and drives the body. This is why a significant change of thought leads to adjustments and changes in the body. And prayer, with the power of God behind it, changes thought as nothing else can.

The suffering of so many is disheartening. But an answer is available. Spiritual awareness lets us confidently utilize the spiritual laws that stop the self-destructive nature of materialistic thinking. It nurtures our spiritual sense of things. It replaces fear and panic with wisdom and peace.

Yes, I believe a solution is at our fingertips. And more than just hope is available, for many are learning: Improved mental health is found through greater spiritual awareness.

You’ll find Keith’s article in themonitor.com.

Guest post: Thinking about Health

Thanks, Robert Clarke, of Florida, for this thought provoking post. 

 

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Robert B. Clark| Leave a comment

Just when you thought there were already way too many diseases, here comes a new one, “Mass Phychogenic Illness” or MPI. Where did it come from? Most recently, from a group of teenage girls in upstate New York. Is it something to worry about? Probably not…unless you think about it too much.

It turns out that if enough people in a close population believe themselves to be ill, a sort of mental contagion takes place and a group sickness is born. The phenomenon, as described here in the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog, is common enough to have earned itself a name and a place in the growing catalogue of diseases.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, writing about the effect of thought on health, said:

“A new name for an ailment affects people like a Parisian name for a novel garment. Every one hastens to get it. A minutely described disease costs many a man his earthly days of comfort.”

Considering the MPI phenomenon prompts some further questions about the effect of thought on health :

*Since there is complete agreement that MPI has mental rather than physical causes, are there other diseases that might have fear-based rather than microbe-based causes?

*If mental contagion is that powerful, does it work in the opposite direction? Could a group be equally convinced of a healthy condition and experience it as a result?

*What does research say?

On the last question, here’s an excerpt from the Mayo Clinic’s take on the topic:

“Is your glass half-empty or half-full? How you answer this age-old question about positive thinking may reflect your outlook on life, your attitude toward yourself, and whether you’re optimistic or pessimistic — and it may even affect your health.”

Could it be that this “age-old question” has a less qualified and more definite old school answer that transcends positive thinking and reaches for spiritual knowledge? The ancient book of Proverbs in The Bible tells us that a person should remember, “…as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Guest post: HEALING AND PLACEBO – WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR HEALTH CARE?

Guest Post from Roger Whiteway, spokesperson and resource on Christian Science to media and legislature of the Commonwealth Of Virginia. 

I’ve been hearing that new medications need to demonstrate that they are significantly more effective than a placebo before they can be brought to market. It’s a topic I want to explore in the near future. If this is the case, it will become harder to market new drug based therapies. It will encourage people to consider the fact that health is not the domain of drug based medicine. 

Thanks for your article, Roger.

Embassy of Italy, Washington DC

One of the world’s leading researchers in the neurobiology of placebos, Fabrizio Benedetti , M.D. of the University of Turin Medical School, Italy,  delivered the final  lecture of a three day conference on placebo’s Fr

Guest post: Belief and its effect on our health

Today’s guest post was written by Russ Gerber and appeared in the Huffington Post on Dec 22, 2011. Russ is a  practitioner and teacher of Christian Science. 

Penny Sarchet doesn’t think of herself as a detective, but she’s been acting like one. She recently received a prize for her science essay on the nocebo effect, one of the winning entries in a writing contest sponsored by the Wellcome Trust in association with the Guardianand The Observer, who have been on the lookout throughout the UK for the next generation of outstanding science writers.

Like any good detective, Sarchet carefully examined the evidence, the scientific research, on nocebos (harmful effects linked to a harmless substance — the opposite of placebo effect). This led her to some compelling observations about the link between a negative mental state and physical suffering.

She saw that in a doctor-patient relationship the patient’s belief makes a world of difference as to that person’s health. What a doctor says and what the patient believes may be more closely tied to the patient’s outcome than what the doctor does physically.

If a doctor’s warnings about possible negative side effects increases the likelihood of the patient experiencing pain or suffering, as research consistently suggests will happen, the leading culprit is the patient’s mental state. Fear or a deep pessimism that they won’t get better can be the underlying enemy to health. Sachet concludes: “As scientists begin to determine how the nocebo works, we would do well to use their findings to manage that most 21st century of all diseases — anxiety.”

The flip-side of the belief coin is the health benefit linked to a positive mental state — the placebo effect.

According to a landmark review published earlier this year, positive expectations are associated with better health. Science Daily reported that the reviewers of more than 160 studies on the mind-body connection were shocked by the consistency they saw in the data. Over and over the evidence showed that a person’s positive beliefs are a strong influence for good on their health.

Exploration of a mind-body connection has a rich history, even crossing into other disciplines. I recently reviewed the research and medical experiments conducted in the last half of the 19th century by Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science Church. Her conclusions parallel what today’s researchers discover as they connect the dots of a placebo and nocebo effect. She noted: “The physical side of this research was aided by hints from homeopathy, sustaining my final conclusion that mortal belief, instead of the drug, governed the action of material medicine.” She wrote in greater depth about her research and the connection she saw of a patient’s belief to his or her health in her book Science and Health.

What’s the bigger picture here? The sleuth instinct in us may sense a need to revise our fundamental assumptions about health and rethink our health practices.

If the root driver of the body’s health (good or bad) lies in what’s occupying our mind, we should be much more alert to what’s tugging at us for attention.

Most people don’t question how often they hear, read, ruminate on and talk about unhealthiness. They take for granted that the risks, symptoms, aches and pains they hear about and are familiar with are involuntary. Since they don’t question such thinking they don’t realize the good effect that comes from reversing it. And that they can.

Why not seriously explore what adds to hope? Find out what builds confidence. What thoughts and conversation about health counteracts fear rather than adding to it? Learn how an increase in spirituality — compassion, prayer, forgiveness and the like — grounds us in positive expectations and purges negative ones, which could have a positive impact on our health.

Sooner or later we’ll see for ourselves what Penny Sarchet and countless others have uncovered — that what we take in, what we believe, has a correlation to our health. The days of thinking that the body operates independent of our beliefs about it are fading away.

Wars wane: is the world really falling into peace?

An outbreak of health!

 

The title of this blog was the headline in Peter Hartcher’s January 31 opinion piece in The Age.

It’s a good question with a surprising answer for many. The tone of Peter’s article tells us that he believes any war is one too many. He points out clearly that although war is too persistent it is in decline throughout the world.

“the startling truth is that while war certainly has not been eliminated, it appears to be on the endangered list.”

Now, world war is one “species” I would gladly see on the endangered list!

Hartcher quotes a few experts on the issue:

• John Mueller, professor of political science at Ohio State University: “”We may be reaching a point where war – in both its international and civil varieties – ceases, or nearly ceases to exist, a remarkable development that has attracted little notice””

• Steven Pinker, Harvard professor of psychology, who says that “it “may be the most important thing that has ever happened in human history”. He writes in The Better Angels of Our Nature: “We may be living in the most peaceable era in our species’ existence.””

Hartcher then shares many statistics to demonstrate the argument which can be read in his article here.

The obvious question is, if war is in decline, why doesn’t it seem like it? Hartcher puts that to Andrew Mack, leader of the Human Security Report, an annual study compiled by researchers at Simon Fraser University in Canada, who puts the reason at the feet of the media: “It’s your fault. It’s partly the media’s news policy – ‘if it bleeds, it leads’.”

Ouch. Seems the media is keen on covering the outbreaks of war but not their conclusions.

Now for an even bigger ouch. Hartcher gives a second reason: “Second, many humanitarian NGOs talk up crises and atrocities, but are quiet about outbreaks of peace. “People don’t like our message” that war is on the decline, Mack says. When he started, for the first time anywhere, collating and publishing annual and authoritative global war tolls, he met resistance. “Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, Oxfam, the International Crisis Group were all saying to us, ‘Whoa, that’s not good’.

Guest post: HEALTH AND THE CORRECTION OF THOUGHT

Thanks Ken, for this great post. Having taught music for a few years  in the past I can relate so well to what you write here! I remember one of my teachers sitting through a performance, smiling and frowning in turn, to quietly tell me, “I loved this bit and that bit… beautiful! Now, stay away from the piano for a week and just read the score and you’ll discover all sorts of things! Come back and share them with me next time.” Code for, “Learn the notes, Daryl!” 

 

I’ve written about my previous career as a composer, pianist, and teacher before on this blog (“Are Filters On?”, “Steinways and Health”).  Among other things, that time in my life provided an interesting area of investigation into the way our thinking affects how we perceive ideas and achieve results.

Let me give you an example.

Frequently I would find myself repeatedly correcting a piano student about how they played a wrong note—all music teachers can relate to this, I’m sure!  I would, for instance, say “It’s a G-sharp.” They in turn would nod understandably and then proceed to play the same G-natural that they had just played. I would again say “G-sharp” and they would play “G-natural.”  And so the dance would go for a little while.

My wife (who would sometimes be in an adjacent room and hear the lessons) and I would afterwards humorously refer to this process as the “G-sharp phenomenon”—a phenomenon which didn’t restrict itself to any age group, level of education, or professional achievements.

It became clear to me that in their earnestness and desire to do the right thing, the pupils had become so overly focused that they were oblivious to my corrections.  They mistakenly thought that if they just kept repeating the passage over and over again that somehow, by sheer dint of effort, they would miraculously get it right.  It was a type of self-hypnotism—nothing less than that.

What did I do?

In order to catch their attention, I would firmly put a stop to it which startled their thought and broke the tunnel vision.  I then made them simply think through—note by note, rhythm by rhythm—what the music was requiring them to do.  This basic technique invariably led to them playing the passage accurately without any intervening practice on their part.  Once they understood exactly what it was they needed to do, their fingers reproduced it.  Their body responded under the right understanding of the music.

Good news for all of the music teachers out there to be sure!  And good news for all of us, too.

Why?

Because the same process can affect our health and our well-being.

If we continuously accept a model of health that involves a wrong answer—one in which inevitable deterioration, illness, disease, and decrepitude becomes our conception of life—then in many ways aren’t we behaving just like those students?  Unflinchingly looking to the same one method—a method based on surgery and drugs—a method that may, and often can, fall short of our hopes and desires?

I’ve seen how stopping to think can bring about significant improvements to my health.  What could I possibly be thinking about that would yield such a result?  My—our—unbroken, permanent connection to an all-loving God.  A God whose help is always available.  A relationship that is entirely spiritual.  It’s the relationship that the Scriptures speak of in Psalm 46:

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

And it’s a relationship that I’m continuing to learn more about in my study ofChristian Science—a system of both health care and spiritual growth—that’s proved repeatedly effective for me and for many others.

A method that anyone can avail themselves of and see firsthand how they can learn to play a “G-sharp” instead of a “G-natural”!

 You’ll find more of Ken’s posts here