Facets of a Diamond - Blog

When I worked in the chronic back wards of a large mental hospital, I had more than two hundred highly disturbed and disintegrated patients whom I was supposed to treat. But how? What could I do over and above the usual tranquilizers? I knew all the patients by name and spoke to as many as possible every day, reaching out as best as I knew how. But what more could I do?

Then I realized the answer lay not in trying to treat them individu­ally—although I tried when I could—but in treating their environment to make it therapeutic. Improving the overall climate of their existence.

This involved many changes.  Many were minor but critical struc­tural changes to the wards themselves. Others were organizational. Perhaps the biggest change was my working with the nurses, helping them to see their major role as establishing a therapeutic climate—especially by a change within themselves.

To quite an extent my plans were successful. The wards certainly became more therapeutic, to the point where I had confidence that a newly admitted very disturbed patient would soon settle. Not because of any drugs, but because of the (relatively) healing climate of his new environment. And because it offered asylum, because it was a sanctuary.

There is a tendency in holistic therapy to ignore the environment of the sufferer—apart from the pollutants in it. Ignored is the overall environment, the gestalt of his existence: his physical environment and, even more so, the emotional climate—including that of his city and his country. And especially his family.

The holistic therapist needs to help the sufferer live in a therapeu­tic climate. And this, of course, must include the therapist’s own healing environment.

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Extract from the book 
Facets of a Diamond: Reflections of a Healer