It is a common experience to feel that our body has let us down when we get sick. We may feel it is broken or flawed in some way and if only it was better designed we wouldn’t have to suffer illness and disease. Likewise, we tend to consider illness and disease as something bad that has happened to us and which we associate with suffering of some kind, be it physical, psychological, emotional or spiritual. This mindset or view of illness and disease is one that is deeply embedded in the biomedical model of illness and disease, a model which sees the patient as a victim of circumstances beyond their control, who is reliant and dependent upon the doctor and the medical profession to fix them.
Even though this model is well outdated and has been replaced by newer models that place increasing responsibility at the feet of the individual for why they have what they have, it remains deeply engrained in the psyche of patients and doctors alike. Patients still come looking to be fixed, demanding to be cured or healed or that “something must be done,” while refusing to make any changes themselves or to accept any responsibility for why they have what they have. Doctors still play the role of the patriarchal “all-knowing” doctor, who is there to fix, mend, repair or replace without truly understanding what it takes to heal.
We examine, investigate, diagnose, prescribe medications, perform operations, administer treatments of one kind or another, all of which serve to alleviate symptoms without actually addressing the fundamental root cause of the condition. Avoiding the latter means we are just performing band-aid medicine, a temporary fix, a solution of sorts, improving function for a while perhaps, but underneath the same rot continues and just leads to another condition elsewhere in the body, that we then attempt to fix, mend, medicate, replace or repair, again without addressing the foundational ill. And so the cycle continues — the multi-symptomatic patient is now commonplace, as nowhere along the line has anyone stopped to address the root ill.
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