Does anyone among you know someone who suffers or has suffered from cancer? What about someone who died from this terrible ailment? Most of us do, it is one of the top 10 “killers” in the world today, 2nd one in the so-called developed countries.
This day has a purpose to encourage research, investment as well as awareness regarding this “modern plague”and to support the scientific community’s efforts into identifying treatment, cure and prevention through their commendable work. Today we are treating two topics, from a non-medical and psycho-social perspective: Palliative Care and the Environment. The definition the World Health Organisation gives us is “an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial, and spiritual.” Death is indeed a natural, if not the most natural part of life, and the still high death rates, though improving, call for stronger attention, besides that of a healthy lifestyle (physical and mental) to focus also on the quality of death, this final rite of passage and preparation for the final stage of mortal life, and preparedness by finding in approaches and techniques coming from therapy, psychology, coaching…and ecopsychology, to assist the patient with a quality passing, acknowledging and accepting the fears and distress, to understand legacy and meaning-making, fostering courage and peace, Therefore we would like to stress, that while cherishing scientific research towards cures and treatment let us not forget or underestimate the power and impact of palliative care, as a basic right for cancer patients. Our second topic concerns the environment, as that is universally accepted as one of the top causes for cancer, just think about the incidence of cancer cases in largely polluted areas. Here at Rescogita our outview and principle are those of interconnectedness, an unhealthy person living in unhealthy community, living in an unhealthy environment and believing that healing is something that is not limited to treating the single human for sickness, rather something that needs to happen in parallel on 3 levels, individual, human community and biosphere in order to win this and the many other heath battles we are facing, and will face, and all three are of equal importance. In the paleolithic the environment was very healthy and still human lifespan was on average 30 years old. Today our lifespan is around 70-80 and yet our natural environment’s flora and fauna are dying. Therefore in our view, healing the individual through the ever-progressing medical sciences, needs to be accompanied by healing the human community ever more dictated by disconnectedness, isolation and fostering addiction and unhealthy lifestyle through psychology and learning, and all that goes hand in hand with healing the natural environment through the environmental, ecological and economical sciences, as all plays a vital role to defeating cancer, and not only.
Rescogita is a startup that focuses on education through training, coaching, capacity building and consulting, grounded on the principles of ecopsychology, meaning in identifying practical solutions to affect the wellbeing of the individual, the community and the biosphere in a single approach.