Happy Hour #6 - Holistic Approaches to Mental Health
We all have mental health. How can we manage it? Dr. Natalie Chua, a clinical and spiritual psychologist shares.
On 18 May, we had Dr. Natalie Chua on holistic approaches to mental health. There’s no video recording to keep the session more intimate. For those who could not make it, here are some take aways and resources from the hour.
1. Anchoring and Appreciation
The session started with a wonderful settling grounding practice that Dr. Natalie calls ‘anchoring’. Her soothing voice invited us to enter a sense of calm easily. We were nursed gently into a space of grace and focus. Permission to set aside time to heal ourselves with knowledge about good health practices.
2. We all have mental health
Having mental health is part of being human
Mental health exists on a continuum
These were such important statements to remind ourselves that we all have some level of mental health or experience varying degrees of healthiness. Just like physical fitness. It is not simply the absence of a condition such as depression or a disorder.
It was only in 2013 (ten years ago is considered recent in scientific discovery and clinical practice), that the clinical community recognised their definition of mental health based on a disease model — assuming that emotional distress is merely a symptom of biological illness. Researchers have found sufficient evidence that one’s mental health can be affected by traumatic experiences (poverty, abuse, etc.) The disease model may default to assumptions and standard pharmacological prescriptions without understanding the root cause of what’s actually affecting the health of patients in the first place.
3. What is considered in a holistic view toward mental health
This gave rise to the importance of a holistic view towards mental health difficulties which Dr. Natalie strives to do:
Understand meaning and value of the struggle
Identify what the illness could be communicating
Honor the mind-body-spirit connection
Understand the influence of systemic, social, psychological and biological factors
Instilling the belief that every individual have the wisdom and capacity to be resilient and transform
4. Understanding over diagnosis (assumptions)
Natalie also introduced the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF). One of her favourite toolkits, developed by a coalition of respected senior psychologists and consultants who believe that a good practice is not merely based on diagnosis. The framework prompts practitioners to ask questions that seek understanding how various factors in the categories of ‘power’, ‘threats’ and ‘meaning’ are affecting one’s health. Questions could sound like:
What is your story?
How did it affect you?
What sense did you make of it?
These are only a pinch of the entire approach so do read more about it in the link above.
5. What does your mental health plate look like?
An amazing analogy for evaluating your mental health Dr. Natalie shared. The Healthy Mind Platter created by Dr. Dan Siegel, a renowned and award-winning educator in clinical psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine.
Out of the seven, Dr. Natalie discussed briefly the importance of Connecting Time (outward) and Time In (inward).
Having safe connections which relates to having a health social environment. And also the paradox of how people are becoming increasingly more connected but also feeling more lonely.
Time In on the other hand looks at how we are spending time in our interior world. Are we reflecting kindly? How are we treating ourselves and if we are creating habits that are good for us.
Learn more about Dr. Natalie Chua’s practice here.
I hope you managed to pick out some useful pointers in this brief recap of the session. Join us live next time to get the full experience!
Take care,
Jan
PS: We were fortunate to have two Happy Hours this May. Watch the first one on 8 May with Prof. Agnis Stibe on hyper-performance,
Next Happy Hour is on habits & timing - RSVP here.