COMMENT
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n spite of these times of financial austerity, Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust recently honoured its commitment to sponsor its third conference exploring how spirituality, art, massage, story telling, meditation and mindfulness can help your mental health. The conference included presentations by practitioners of mindfulness, Tai Chi, meditation, aromatherapy, art therapy, Qi-Gong, and traditional religious practices, alongside psychiatrists, social workers and nurses.
Some years ago this collection of disparate disciplines would have been scarcely imaginable in the UK. However, recent research has led to spiritual and religious therapies and coping strategies emerging to take their place alongside conventional ways of helping people to recover from mental distress.
Mindfulness based approaches now have NICE recommendation for treatment of various disorders. The techniques of mindfulness have been developed within Theravada Buddhism over 2500 years. They aim to increase the ability of the individual to achieve enlightenment, specifically by practicing detachment from thoughts and feelings. ‘Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally.’1
Want to work with your staff to get better value for money and improve your patients’ experience? Unleash their spirituality, says Richard Harlow
exercises that are practiced across the Buddhist world have been shown to help with chronic pain, addictions, anxiety and depression.
The process of achieving NICE recommendation requires huge resources of money and time to build up the clinical evidence base. In the meantime, huge numbers of people will continue to use complementary and alternative therapies and practice religious rituals as part of their personal strategy to manage
10 nhe Sep/Oct 10
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