Ellen should have been outraged. Instead she felt only relief. During sixty hospital stays at a university, her doctors inexcusably failed to find the major life stress that was responsible for her illness. It wasn’t difficult to link her symptoms directly to lifelong emotional abuse by her mother. In Ellen’s case, bringing the impact of the abuse into conscious awareness was sufficient to cure her physical ailment. I was appalled that she suffered needlessly for fifteen years.
Stress-related illness is responsible for over half of all visits to primary care clinicians. Hundreds of millions of patients around the world are suffering as Ellen once did and, like her, have normal diagnostic tests. Fortunately, certain issues crop up again and again in these patients. The underlying problems usually are not hidden too deeply. But despite their impeccable credentials, Ellen’s doctors (including a psychiatrist) never looked into several of these areas. Unfortunately, this is the norm in our health care system with a high cost in human suffering as well as in dollars.
This blog will provide jargon-free information for patients, mental health professionals, medical clinicians and interested members of the public. Please join me and my colleagues as we work to solve the dilemma of stress-related illness, bring relief and end the outrage.
Tags: illness, medical education, stress
