Mental health and Health

TRANSCRIPT

Interviewer:

You're tuned in to the morning show here on Youth Jam with your morning show host lachlan Bose. And as it's a Thursday, on the other end of the line, I have Dr. Patrick Jones, founder of Perth Psychologists, who each Thursday comes on air to discuss a different facet of our mental well-being. Patrick, how have you been keeping this last week? 

Patrick:

Yes, I'm good. Thank you. 

Interviewer:

Wonderful. Now, what I thought we'd look at is the subject of mental health and health. And that sounds a little confusing at the outset, but of course, there is something of a delineation between those two concepts, for sure. 

Patrick:

Do you want me to jump in terms of what I think would be the link between them? 

Interviewer:

Yes, and that's my first question, I believe. What are some of the ways our mental health can impact our physical health? 

Patrick:

Yeah, sure. Well, the relationship between health and well-being is a big thing, but what people don't always realize is that it's a two-way thing or it's bi-directional. So, for example, people that have some kind of physical illness or physical pain, often present with a sort of decreased mood, if you like. So the physical bits can affect the mood of the well-being, but it can also work in the opposite direction where if people aren't in a great mental space, that can affect their physical state. There was a study, that was kind of like the older population, but they found that people who had reduced well-being when they were older connected to decreased survival rates. 

And the study that found 30% of people were in the lowest well-being category, and obviously, this is an older population, but 30% of them died during the eight years follow-up of that study, compared with only 10% who died who were in the highest well being category. In other words, well-being was the predictor of their mortality. And they're much older people. But what it shows is that the body does listen to our emotional state. So it's kind of critical that it's a two-way street. Physical obviously can affect our mood, but it's critical to manage the emotional state because our body is listening. 

Interviewer:

Well, in that case, how do we tell whether a physical complaint is the result of a mental one? 

Patrick:

Yeah, well, I mean, this field, they call it psychosomatic medicine or psychosomatics body-mind. I think we have to be quite careful with this because sometimes we can go a little too far, but then of course, sometimes obviously not enough. But I think one critical thing is just to check, are they feeding off each other, the physical and the emotional?

And if I'm experiencing something physical, but my mental state is okay, then I know that I'm not sort of augmenting it or increasing it by my mental state. And so I think it's always good to separate the physical state from my emotional state and just to check if I'm also feeling really bad in response to that physical or because of other things. 

I might want to see if I can manage my mental state and find ways to be able to manage that so that it's not increasing in any way the physical symptoms. Because sometimes we just have very genuine physical complaints. We just don't want to increase them through the emotional or mental events that are going on inside of us. 

Interviewer:

And have you got any techniques or any sort of practices that could help us in gaining a physical awareness that can play into our knowledge of physical well-being? 

Patrick:

Yeah, well, I think the big insight in the Mindfulness work is that we call it more suffering than pain. And that it's a combination of two elements, a bit like in chemistry where you have one element plus another element combined creates a compound and sometimes that compound let's just say if we put it use that same analogy, mindfulness-based pain management. What it does is it tries to separate the physical sensation, which perhaps we could call pain with my reaction to that physical sensation which we could call, if you like, my emotional or mental resistance to that physical event. So if we have those two elements, we have the physical pain which is sort of a genuine thing, pain receptors are picking up stuff and we also have this psychological resistance to that physical sensation. 

Those two elements create this compound which we call suffering, which is like now I'm suffering. But if we can separate them and go okay, there are physical phenomena here but my mental relationship to it is up to me. I can't perhaps at this point change the physical stimulus. Perhaps I now need to do something medical or some intervention but at least I can manage my mental state. And what's kind of even more concerning or kind of crazy to realize once you read the research is that the psychological resistance or reaction to the physical sensation is the bigger part of that compound in terms of how much pain we feel.

And when we clean up the psychological resistance and kind of get back into it just a more realistic clear place, they find that the overall pain weight lessens which is quite amazing. The body responds to us cleaning up our mental act. It's quite amazing. 

Interviewer:

How can we best retain a healthy mental standing amidst illness and or disability? 

Patrick:

Well, there is probably an easy way that I like to look at it and that's to separate the events that are going on with our talk about it. You could almost say our narrative or our story. And once we see that they're two separate things and mindful is quite clear on this, almost like if we can see that we create the narrative, then we can control the narrative. And one of the terms in mindfulness is that they're self-created and they can be seen as passing mental events rather than often distinguished between, rather than seeing them as realities. They're virtualities, they're things that we've created. So when there are physical things that are going on that are difficult just to be able to notice, what reality in a sense am I creating? And therefore if I'm creating it's not a real thing. 

I'm creating it in my head. So to separate events and then my story about or my narrative about that event is a really good sort of general principle in terms of being able to manage physical symptoms or our health. 

Interviewer:

And Patrick, my next question is sort of broad and I mean it's to do with how we can remain healthy. I know a lot of people out there are going to have a rough idea around diet and exercise and everything like that, but I thought I'd level in on that in the scope of what is your advice to our listeners around remaining healthy? 

Patrick:

Okay, so my advice would be to do triathlons. Okay, but seriously, actually I did an Olympic triathlon on the weekend. It's, what was it? 1500 meters, swim 40K, ride ten k, run after it, you feel amazing. Anyway, health is very important to me personally because I see that the whole quality of life balance. All the research suggests that you've got to be able to have numbers in each of those categories. The top five relationships are work, money, health, and leisure. They're the externals and kind of nurturing or looking after each one of those separately and then the mental relationship around those things is the other half. But specifically, again, back to research. Regular physical activity is seen to protect well-being and it reduces cortisol output during the day. And so, of course, people know that typical training interventions, they're usually two parts. 

They have the aerobic and the anaerobic and it's really important to be able to get that balance. The aerobic, which is the fitness stuff. The anaerobic, you could say is the strength stuff on the like strength and conditioning sometimes it's called. But the implications are that it improves what we call health-related quality bite. It's correlated with increasing or maintaining cognitive function. So I mean, there's so much research behind it and of course, it brings in the leisure component. You can connect with people. It feels good. Endorphins start kicking. So anyway that suits you, I love triathlons. Go for it if you want to have a shot, but do something that takes your fancy, that continues to protect your well-being and maintain your health. 

And a lot of what we've been talking about, not just today, but in the scope of our previous discussions, are things that a lot of people may experience but they may also experience in varying degrees of severity. In that way, it can be a little difficult to distinguish where we've been talking about ways that we can personally manage, but then ultimately, when we should be seeking professional help. So my next question is, when is the right time to speak to a professional? If you've got a complaint that you're not quite sure you're struggling to deal with. 

Yeah, look, I think the simple rule that you could kind of put there is when you feel you've gone past your current skill level, and it can be in any area, which is why it's just as much so for sport or actual physical and mental health, it's okay to be pushed beyond our current resources. It's the standard thing, like in economics, just supply and demand. And sometimes the demand for life is greater than the supply that we've currently got. So we just need to get some more supply, buy some more product, which in this case, buy some more mental resources, wherever it is. We just need to increase the supply and access to the team. Essentially, in every area, every discipline, sport, psychology, finance, whatever it is some people can coach you to that next level. 

And I just think it's a wonderful thing. I don't have any time for the stigmatizing of getting coaching or counseling. I just see that as just accountable, responsible way of just protecting your game and improving your game. 

Interviewer:

Yeah. And that's a very solid message on which to end. Patrick, thanks again. Thanks for getting in touch with us again here on The Morning Show on Youth Jam. Hope to speak to you again soon. 

Patrick:

Indeed. Pleasure.