This is the way that the World Health Organisation describes what good health should encompass. Two seminars I have attended recently have addressed issues around mental health and palliative care which embrace these concepts.
A focus on the spiritual dimension in understanding individuals and finding out where they can develop their coping strengths is an essential element when we are considering how to retain connections and to combat loneliness.
We need to listen, to see and hear the individual and have the capacity for kindness. A Joseph Rowntree report (13th December 2013 – A Better Life Programme) highlights the fact that kindness is a critical quality and that other skills can be taught. TLC might be thought as old fashioned but emerges as a fundamental need “if we don’t recruit, train and support intelligent kindness, we all face a bleak future” (JRF Report 2013).
Voluntary Health Scotland has brought together a group to consider mental health issues and the Scottish Government are currently considering its ‘Palliative and End of Life Care Strategic Framework’; further information can be obtained from NHS Inform Palliative Care.
Maureen O’Neill
June 2015