Mind and Body: Revisited

An interesting article (on the BBC website as usual – apologies that my daily reading habits might strike some as boringly narrow) again makes links between mind and body disorders, suggesting that physcal conditions like lung cancer ought to be recognised as having a psychological component; an addiction to smoking can lead to lung cancer, [...]

Psycho/Somatic: Mental Health as a Bodily Concern

A recent BBC article (other news sites are available, and most of them are better) with the potentially slightly alarmist title ‘I was disabled by my mind’ offers an important insight into the way in which mental health issues can spill over and manifest in physical or somatic symptoms. One of the major misconceptions of mental health [...]

A Better Alternative to Alternative Medicine

Last night I watched a BBC documentary about a young ‘psychic surgeon’, who travelled around the UK to perform healing on patients with a range of diagnosed conditions, from alzheimer’s to brain tumours, gall stones to chronic pain. As a devout sceptic of all things mystical, I was decidedly troubled by the seeming ease with [...]