This unique book is about the near-death experience of a medical illness, told as a provocative story about activating aloneness, disconnection, pain, suffering, loss, grief, impermanence, healing, resilience, renewal, love, hope, recovery, and a growing dialogue between faith, values, health, and science.
The author, a leading addiction psychiatrist describes how he learned the meaning of being a patient through the experience of physical and mental diminishment, vulnerability, and uncertainty. This journey is also about reexamining the author’s approach to working with patients living with addiction and how it has profoundly shaped his professional identity and personal life. The book is deeply affirming, for both healthcare practitioners and lay people, offering an invitation to recognize the poignant value of working through their experience of illness, starting a conversation on how they choose to think of the world, themselves, their loved ones, their patients and families (for practitioners), and coming to terms with their own struggles and discovering their internal hidden resources and wisdom. This narrative has no intention to provide an expert advice or a recipe on how people should experience illness and reclaim their personhood and deep worth. A compelling contribution to the clinical literature, Rethinking Illness: A Psychiatrist's Near-Death Reckoning with Healing and Healthcare is written from the heart with profound call for a more holistic and deep appreciation and understanding of the interplay of personal, scientific, spiritual dimensions of health and healing, with the ultimate outcome of change and growth. This genre of memoir is an essential reading for everyone who is willing to examine the experience of living with an illness and everyone in training or working in healthcare.