Design Thinking Paradigm

For this week’s assignment, we have to review an article and analyze it by using the Design Thinking paradigm. I decided to use this article “Healing from Within: Spirituality and Mental Health”. It is very appropriate for me as I have always been fascinated by the effect of spirituality on our physical wellbeing and will be the topic for my final paper.

The author explores how an awareness of spirituality can be helpful in the work of the professional staff and care workers of the health industry. The benefits from spirituality includes help to prevent many physical and mental illnesses, reduce the severity of symptoms, enhance recovery and increase the endurance factor. He mentions that spiritual awareness can add a powerful and much-needed dimension whenever we have reached our limits. The spiritual approach fosters a positive attitude even in the most agonizing situations. It fosters calm in the place of anxiety and hope in the place of despair.

The article states clearly the need to include spiritual support to provide a more comprehensive care for the patients. The author describes that grief, bewilderment, fear, guilt, anger and other painful feelings can gradually be overcome or healed by spirituality. When one of my friends was suffering from pancreatic cancer, his family and close friends experienced all these strong and negative emotions. The pain was excruciating to him and we could only watch helplessly. Spirituality provided some comfort and was the bond that kept us in solidarity to be there to show our love. I have discovered more studies regarding spirituality and health, as well as interesting videos from UCSF’s Mini Medical School for the Public by Dr Kevin Barrows and Dr Michael Rabow.

The author explains that spiritual assessment of the patient should be included in order to understand his spirituality state. The article consists of clear guidelines, including the opening questions to start the discussion. The author explains that the staff will have to be trained to provide spiritual support. He encourages to recruit further assistance from patient’s family or friends to provide more information and support. It is also necessary to provide the space for this form of interaction with the involvement from local religious communities.

The article does not show any supporting evidence but states that further qualitative and quantitative research need to be done. It concludes that since the most important matter is the wellbeing of patients, so spiritual care must be incorporated.

The spiritual care needs to be genuine that comes from the giver’s heart. This will require the giver to feel love and compassion first. The giver must possess virtue or good character in order to be able to develop such feelings. The decision to hire professional staff will become more complicating as now their characters will be taken into account.

I like how the author explains the reciprocity principle of spiritual care, whereby giver and receiver both benefit from their interaction. The professional staff and carers are often stressed, suffering from high marital breakdown, drug dependency, alcoholism, depression and suicide. Subsequently the learning of spirituality will benefit themselves while developing the skill to provide spiritual care for the patients.

This article is very helpful for writing my final paper since I will be writing about the effects of spirituality on health. It has shown me that spirituality can even work in negative ways that may disrupt the treatment of the patient, for instance the practise of fasting and refusing medication. This is another aspect that I have not considered before. This gets me thinking, will there be more positive and negative effects of spirituality on our wellbeing? What do you think?


Wish you all happiness and health till next post!
 

Bibliography
Dr. Larry Culliford (2005). Healing from Within: Spirituality and Mental Health. Retrieved November 20, 2013, from http://www.miepvideos.org/Healing%20From%20within.pdf

 

The Mane Event

When I said that this course is so much fun, last Saturday outing to the Mane Event certainly top it off. This was my first experience to watch a live show with animals. Everything was fresh and interesting. I wasn’t expecting the smell and I was holding my breath at first. But how long could one do that! Before long  I gave up and was taking small breaths and soon found that  my nose was no longer sensitive. I am really grateful to our incredible ability to adapt so quickly. Believe it or not, I could even eat my lunch during the break.

The event we went to was the Trainers Challenge whereby we watched 3 trainers put their skill to work to show the public their abilities and methods of training an unbroke colt, teaching their colt to turn, gallop, walk backwards, stop and saddled. The training usually is done 30 to 60 days or more but now the trainers will have 1 hour for 3 consecutive days. The 3 trainers of the day were Paul Clarkson from Australia, Kerry Kuhn from Kansas and Cayley Wilson from British Columbia.

It is always a good idea to have some fun even while training.  For instance Kerry was having fun by startling the colt which later played that trick on him. The colt looked so comical with his position of flight or fight stance.  It was so funny thinking even animals want to have fun. I have seen online that owners are buying toys such as big balls for their horses to keep them entertained. This reminded me very much of our HEAL class.

Cayley used 2 long ropes to guide the colt to the right or left. It seemed to be easier on the horse as the ropes were kept loose and guiding the horse gently to each side. I reflected that this is the way how we teach our children, kind of giving them the space to learn on their own, keeping a loose rein on them.

According to Erich Fromm, productive love always includes care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. In this sense, Cayley showed true love for his horse because he listened to the horse. Cayley showed the colt respect by letting it chose to continue with the training or not, calling it ‘Buddy’ and working on the side that the horse was more comfortable with so to build its confidence. He did not force the horse to complete the task, giving it time to get comfortable. His approach is similar to the system we used at our non-profit organisation. We encourage members to contribute according to their strengths or availability of resources. After they become more confident and comfortable, then they will be encouraged to explore new activities.

Even though the training was done without verbal communication, I could see the connection between the horse and its trainer, especially for Kerry and Cayley whereby the horses followed them wherever they went. It is said that horses need leaders so they obviously accepted their trainers as their leaders. Whereas for Paul, the Australian trainer, seemed to assume superior status from the beginning. His horse did not show interest or became friendly with him. It was probably just going through the motion since it was kept in the pen, it had nowhere to run and hide.

The connection between human and animals requires time, encouragement and guidance. The trainers would pat or rub the horses to praise, assure or calm them. We, humans, have come to see that even animals have feelings like happiness, love, sadness, anger and fear. Now, we are loving these animals like friends, companions and part of our family. This is also part of my teaching that animals are living beings with feelings and intelligence, so we should not slaughter or hurt them. Hence my family and I have been vegetarians for past 18 years to avoid causing suffering to all living beings.

I am thankful to Dr Smith and SFU for organising this event. I enjoyed it immensely, learning more about Canadian culture and the spirit of the Wild West.