A New Look at Medicine and the Mind-Body Problem: Can Dewey’s Pragmatism Help Medicine Connect with Its Mission?

Shelton, Wayne

doi:10.1353/pbm.2013.0030

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…This contributes to a disempowerment of patients and discouragement of thinking that focuses on the whole patient. 1 In this sphere, conditions such as low back pain are viewed as local, biological problems and generally managed as such.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can emotional distress induce acute low back pain? A systematic review

Collins,

McDevitt-Petrovic,

Henderson

2023

Physiotherapy Practice and Research: The Official Journal of Th

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INTRODUCTION: Low back pain (LBP) is a leading cause of disability worldwide. A spectrum of psychological conditions such as anxiety, fear, stress and low mood are often reported to co-occur in individuals with persistent back pain and are cited as reasons for the continued experience of pain. However, any potential causal effect of emotional distress on new onset LBP is understudied. Therefore, the aim of this review is to examine the impact of emotional distress as a risk factor for new presentations of acute low back pain. METHODS: A systematic review was performed in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. The Medline, Embase and APA databases were searched for primary research articles exploring emotional distress and low back pain. Prospective studies that investigated subjects initially free from back pain, who also undertook some form of psychometric testing at baseline, were included in the review. In total, 6 studies were identified with a broad geographical spread and diverse population cohorts including pregnant women, forestry workers, nursing students, adolescents, individuals with medical comorbidities and adult population studies. RESULTS: The results from all six studies found a significant relationship between an initial presence of emotional distress and subsequent onset of acute low back pain. CONCLUSION: This review encourages the acknowledgement of underlying emotional distress as a risk factor in acute low back pain, and to address it as part of the overall management plan.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can emotional distress induce acute low back pain? A systematic review

Collins,

McDevitt-Petrovic,

Henderson

2023

Physiotherapy Practice and Research: The Official Journal of Th

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“…However, by isolating the “mind” from the “body,” medical practice rooted in dualism discounts the significance of mental states in the maintenance of health and privileges objective evidence of disease over subjective reports provided by patients (Sullivan, 1986[20]; Mehta, 2011[13]). In Western medicine, traditional Cartesian dualism facilitates the biological reductionism of disease, supports medical practices that do not necessarily support healing and wellness, promotes a dispassionate and mechanistic approach to patient care, disempowers patients, and discourages humanistic ways of thinking that focus on the whole patient (Switankowsky, 2000[21]; Shelton, 2013[17]). The continued embeddedness of dualism is also problematic in that it underpins the artificial conceptual separation of “physical” and “mental” disorders in medical practice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Problem of Dualism in Modern Western Medicine

Gendle

2016

Mens Sana Monogr

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Dualism is historically important in that it allowed the medical practice to be divorced from church oversight. The reductionist approaches of modern Western medicine facilitate a dispassionate and mechanistic approach to patient care, and dualist views promoted by complementary and alternative medicine are also problematic. Behavioural disorders are multifactorally realizable and emerge apparently chaotically from interactions between internal physiological systems and the patient's environment and experiential history. Conceptualizations of behavioural disorders that are based on dualism deny the primacy of individual physiology in the generation of pathology and distract from therapies that are most likely to produce positive outcomes. Behavioural health professionals should adopt holistic models of patient care, but these models must be based on methodologies that emphasize radical emergence over the artificial separation of the “physical” and “mental.” This will allow for the humanistic practice of medicine while simultaneously maximizing the likelihood of treatment success.

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