Comets, holistic care and peripheral vision

Comet Hartley 2 is still bright and yet throughout its visit by Earth quite diffuse, so I have yet to try to find it with my binoculars. To effectively use binoculars, a telescope (or even a microscope) and enjoy the astronomical delights (especially as Councils save money and switch off street lights) it helps to develop your peripheral vision.

Nursing, medicine and social care calls for its own kind of peripheral vision. Peripheral vision that nonetheless enables us to really see. It is ironic that in order to see the big picture that includes the person, that allows us to coherently assess, plan, deliver and evaluate person-centred care we must look off-center.




Comet image source: http://maineastro.com/2010/10/binocular-comet-now-high-in-the-sky/

World Mental Health 'Day' - what about the night shift?

For convenience sake our lives usually follow the sun's traverse. The majority of events associated with World Mental Health Day will take place during office hours and early evening.


I am looking forward to a local event in Leyland, Lancashire on Monday, which includes speed dating. This will provide that 10-15 minute opportunity to share and obtain information about other services and people involved in local mental health care. The agenda looks excellent and includes the active participation of carers and service users.

So, what of World Mental Health 'Day'?

Mental health - like all health and social care is a 24 hour affair. How often do we forget this? Of all the care (knowledge) domains I write about here, mental health remains the 'silent one'. If you have had worries, anxiety and much more besides you know full well there are actually 24 hours in a day and the silence is not because 'mental health' sleeps. So 'Day' is quite apposite in shedding light on what remains a poorly understood and  stigmatised aspect of health care and our lives. 

Comprising all four declared domains and uncertainty - the spiritual domain is not referred to in Hodges' model explicitly and yet in our day-to-day existence spiritual matters figure in lives just begun, journeys ongoing and lives at an end and people remembered. Whether we practice a religion, follow a belief there is no escape from news that relates to religion. Strange then: not listed in Hodges' model and yet more evident and prevalent than mental health it seems. In my career I have noticed how religion and mental health can be very uncomfortable companions for some individuals. One exacerbating or being the cause of problems in the other. By the same, or maybe a different token, religion is also a great source of comfort, solace, affirmation, peace and reconciliation for many and a crucial resource through the many people who work under the auspices of the World's religions.

I have tried to catch this 'relationship' in my categorization of links in the INTER - INTRAPERSONAL domain which includes:

Psychology, Mental Health, Therapies, with Philosophy, Ethics, Ideas, Context, Creativity, Theology and Inter-Transdisciplinary resources.

So wherever you are, I hope you find peace especially through this day and night, whether or however you illuminate your mind, heart and soul.

Image source: http://www.daily-tangents.com/ImageCat/ErthMoon/
and NHS various.

Good things come to those who wait...:

Being interested in astronomy I've used this theme in quite a few blog posts. Hodges' model cannot only act as a repository for a constellation of ideas - the model is up there in the constellations - in several forms including - The Southern Cross, Crux.

I thought about the Milky Way, but was disappointed about the scope for finding Hodges' model there on two counts:

1. we (and more especially our children) can hardly see the Milky Way such is the light pollution;
2. the Milky Way does not reflect Hodges' model - which axis would it be?

Then I realised:
One day, there will be two bands of star dust across the night sky (c/o APOD):

Milky Way Galaxy Doomed: Collision with Andromeda Pending
Illustration Credit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI), and A. Mellinger

It just goes to show you... good things come to those who wait...

 
Image source: The Southern Cross  

Additional links: International Year of Astronomy Kepler Star Wheel