Building Strong Social Networks Could Cure Your Illness
The town that’s found a potent cure for illness – community.
A great article (linked at the bottom) by George Monbiot of The Guardian in the UK, about a town in Somerset, Frome, which has seen a dramatic fall in emergency hospital admissions since it began a collective project to combat isolation.
Here (in italics) are a couple of extracts from the article, that highlight the importance of social relationships and a sense of community for our physical and mental health – previous research indicating that the magnitude of the effect being comparable with quitting smoking.
What this provisional data appears to show is that when isolated people who have health problems are supported by community groups and volunteers, the number of emergency admissions to hospital falls spectacularly. While across the whole of Somerset emergency hospital admissions rose by 29% during the three years of the study, in Frome they fell by 17%. Julian Abel, a consultant physician in palliative care and lead author of the draft paper, remarks: “No other interventions on record have reduced emergency admissions across a population.”
Remarkable as Frome’s initial results appear to be, they shouldn’t be surprising. A famous paper published in PLOS Medicine in 2010 reviewed 148 studies, involving 300,000 people, and discovered that those with strong social relationships had a 50% lower chance of death across the average study period (7.5 years) than those with weak connections. “The magnitude of this effect,” the paper reports, “is comparable with quitting smoking.” A celebrated study in 1945showed that children in orphanages died through lack of human contact. Now we know that the same thing can apply to all of us.
The contents of this interesting article come as no surprise to us at Mickel Therapy because joy / lack of joy are important Mickel concepts and areas of focus. In short, joy helps to lead us in the direction of health and well-being whilst lack of joy sends us in the opposite direction. And there isn’t a huge amount of joy to be found in social isolation.
Very often, when treating clients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia, IBS, anxiety/depression and many more, using Mickel techniques, we see that clients have become socially isolated because of their illness, and rectifying this plays a huge role in the resolution of their health condition. Here are some links outlining more information on the Mickel approach, and a couple of cases of the Mickel technique in action.
If you would like to make an appointment, or find out whether Mickel Therapy can help you, email me at tim@timaltman.com.au or phone 0425 739 918.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/21/town-cure-illness-community-frome-somerset-isolation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other