Depression: an obstacle to learning LO11121

David C. Rupley, Jr. (dcrupley@coredcs.com)
Sun, 24 Nov 1996 23:27:43 -0600

Replying to LO11026 --

Replying to Roxanne Abbas and Anne Tyler:

>> I serve on the board of a mental health center and the staff there is
>> adamantly opposed to broadening their scope to preventative measures.

>Do you have a sense of their underlying reasons for resisting addressing
>prevention measures? I'm a little wary of my own cynicism that jumps to
>ask whether they are concerned about losing their income streams. Is it
>perhaps that some of them don't feel appropriately trained to do
>prevention? Is it the difficulty of clearly understanding the causation
>questions here? or the probable complexity of the causation?

Roxanne, I agree that it may be some of these and some identity issues.
Let us also not forget that change is a source of significant resistance.
The paradigm shift involved in healthcare being a "promotion of health" as
compared to "treatment for sickness" is very new. The incentives
certainly are for professionals to treat illness and resist promoting
health.

Before we rail against the mental health field; however, let's reflect on
Medicine as a whole. We have known the relationship between stress and
cardiovascular disease since Benson wrote The Relaxation Response. The
medical community AND society as a whole has largely ignored these
developments. Prevention is work and is not always successful. Treatment
may not be much more successful, but it is less work. A reference here to
"time spent jogging is added..." and I'll just skip the exercise.

Back to why. I am very interested in a focus on creating healthier work
environments and healthier communities. Anyone with knowledge of
organizations pursuing this please chime in.

David C. Rupley, Jr.
dcrupley@coredcs.com

"Man's inner nature is identical with the nature of the universe, and thus
man learns about his own nature from nature herself." - Rolling Thunder

-- 

"David C. Rupley, Jr." <dcrupley@coredcs.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>