November 2005 ISSUE
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THE DOCTOR IS IN |
ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2006
BRING YOUR BODY,
BRING YOUR MIND
BY GEORGE LEE
The PEGG
He has the education, the publication credits, the reputation and the kind of ahead-of-the-curve medical philosophy to write his own ticket. Yet it is the drug addicts and other broken lives of Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside that Dr. Gabor Maté chooses to treat.
Why? It’s a question he’ll address in his next book, I Need a Fix: Life in a Culture of Addiction. Dr. Maté, who will bring his sometimes controversial philosophies on mind-and-body unity to the next APEGGA Annual Conference, gave The PEGG a sneak peek.
“I’m still not clear about this calling — part obligation and duty, part response to suffering,” Dr. Maté writes in the book he’s working on now. “My patients are among the sickest, the neediest and the most neglected of any people in this country. All their lives they have been neglected, abandoned and self-abandoned, time and again.
“Their addictions make every medical treatment encounter a challenge. Where else do you find people in such poor health and yet so resistant to taking care of themselves, or even allowing others to take care of them? One literally has to talk them into the hospital . . .”
Dr. Maté is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and resource centre where many of his patients suffer from mental illness, drug addiction, HIV — or all three.
It’s an entirely different demographic he’ll find in the APEGGA Continuing Professional Development program in Edmonton, April 20. But he’ll have plenty to offer at that venue, as well. Good health, he says, opens the door to a better life.
“Many of us live with hidden stresses that burden both our private lives and our careers,” explains Dr. Maté. “The more we can recognize them, the freer we can be to achieve our true goals in all aspects of our lives, professional and personal.”
One of his books is about those stresses: When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. Dr. Maté is also the author of Scattered Minds: A New Look at the Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder, and of Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, which he co-wrote with developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld.
Says the Budapest-born Dr. Maté: “Everything I’ve ever done — my studies of history and literature, my work as a teacher, my political interests, my medical studies, my experience as a family physician and palliative care specialist, and my own personal psychological work — have led me to where I have insight into how, as a society, we have become too stressed and, in many ways, very self-harming. And too, I’ve learned how to transmit that information to others in a way that many find liberating in their lives.
“I’ve also learned from my own mistakes — my workaholism, for one — and from their impact on my family.”
A common thread in Dr. Maté’s work is that mind and body “are one, inseparable unit,” he says. “There is no longer any doubt. Neither is there any doubt that how people live their lives emotionally has a major impact on their physical health. The scientific work revealing the mind/body unity has reached a critical mass, with more and more research appearing in the professional literature.”
But still he faces resistance. “My book (When the Body Says No) is a bestseller in Canada and has been published in eight other lang-uages on five continents. The only resistance I face is from people — often medical people — who are not able to recognize that body and mind are truly one, who simply haven’t looked at the evidence.
“My experience is that busy professionals in all fields are grateful for teaching that helps them make more informed, more liberated choices in all arenas of life. I expect to receive an enthusiastic response from your members, as I have from accountants, teachers, nurses, physicians, psychologists and others.”
MORE INFO
Dr. Gabor Maté
www.drgabormate.com
Annual Conference 2006
Watch for news and announcements in upcoming editions of
The PEGG