A New Approach For Healing in Medicine Towards a New Theory of Healing
The world is an uncertain place. In current times we experience unprecedented degrees of chaos and uncertainty. The rapid and vast current transformations that global human societies and the environment are undergoing in the Anthropocene result in numerous, interrelated and closely linked crises, often called ‘poly-crisis’ or ‘meta-crisis’.
Can human beings still ‘heal’ in such times and environments? We must ask ourselves: “what is healing?”.
Reframing the Approach to Chronic Illness: A Call for Innovation and Compassion
The pervasive nature of chronic diseases like Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), and Chronic Low Back Pain underscores the collective suffering experienced by individuals worldwide. These conditions are not isolated anomalies; they are part of a larger tapestry of ailments that include COPD, asthma, obesity, anxiety, depression, Irritable Bowel Disease, and even the relatively recent phenomenon of Long Covid. It is a strong reflection on our medical journey that, over the course of a century or more, we have sought solutions to these challenges. We are currently encountering high degrees of diseases of unknown origin and "medically unexplained symptoms". Thus, it is time to consider a new perspective—one that considers the lessons learned from our long history of research and strives for innovative, collective, and compassionate approaches to alleviate the enduring burden of chronic illnesses. Could the methodologies of transdisciplinary science be applied into medical practice? Can we develop an approach towards a new theory of healing?
Transdiciplinary Science
A precise and novel theory of healing requires decision-making and sensory perception contemplates not only the modeling of the perceiving and estimating organism (or a group of organisms in the case of group decision making), but also modeling of the uncertain and unequivocal environmental inputs to these organisms. Two important features of contemporary transdisciplinary science have been related to the 'probabilistic theory of reliable judgment under uncertainty'. First, the significance of formative learning and second the co-evolution of the actors’ strategies and the environment.
Here, we must acknowledge that the view is still dualistic. The language distinguishes between the ‘actors’ and their ‘environment’, between subject and object. Moving beyond the positivistic correlational and 'mechanistic determinism models' of “reliable” social judgment, transdisciplinary science accentuates the importance of formative learning processes. Formative learning in transdisciplinary partnerships results from co-construction process of research questions between scientists and societal actors and from the interactive, iterative assessment and adjustment of the research. The recognition of the uncertain and evolving nature of collaboration precisely opens the possibility of formative learning processes. Such learning processes create new social possibilities for compromise and collective decision making, beyond the given status quo, by recognizing the differences amongst the actors in a socially inclusive manner. Illustrative examples of such transformative and formative processes of such scientific collaborations have provided novel conceptual and methodological results. In medicine we can learn from such collaborative approaches.
A modern, up-to-date medical theory and a theory of healing requires establishment of its conceptual foundation within current global affairs. Medicine, herein can no longer be a compartmentalized outside of the pertinent contemporary debates, subservient to other scientific approaches, waiting and expecting other scientific disciplines to create the greater solutions while medicine and medical practitioners provide healing to communities who suffer the consequences of current global crises. Global environmental change related to climate crisis, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, population growth, rising inequalities and the financial crisis are examples of the current poly-crisis requiring rapid psychological and physiological and sustainable adaptations of individuals and societies. However, the mainstream medical system is poorly equipped and unable to deal with such rapidly progressive complex predicaments that humanity is currently facing. Especially with the focus on short-term productivity and profit, modern medicine often contributes to the existing stress rather than providing support for healing and creation of healing environments.
The other question is, therefore, how to create sustainable healing environments?
Solving sustainability problems involves decisions on values that require civic and patient participation as well as the building of social legitimacy for proposed transition pathways to sustainable societies. Therefore, both scientists and policy makers have called for re-conceptualizing the role of experts, practitioners and citizens in the production and use of scientific knowledge. In this context, sustainability science has progressively constructed the transition from interdisciplinary approaches to transdisciplinary collaborations, which pursues the integration of scientific and extra-scientific expertise. Within the medical and clinical context this approach means integration of patient’s embodied knowledge, their experiences into the extraction and innovation process. The lived experiences of patients provide valuable information for innovation of novel pathways to understand and heal chronic illness. Decision-making under the uncertainty of multi-actor settings 9patient-provider) requires integration of different world-views, cultural values, human preferences as well as diverse knowledge, experience, conflicting objectives and power within the relationship. Thus, this process is a complex, collaborative pathway towards healing and freedom from chronic pain and suffering. This novel approach differs from other methodologies in public health research and medical treatment paradigm. It is based on collaborative interaction, reflection, data collection, and refinement that aims to improve health and healing, reduce health inequities through involving the people who, in turn, take actions to improve their own health.
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