Natural Selection

Just thought I’d share with you one of the sessions of a seminar I attended on Sunday on Mental Health, Childhood and Autism. The particular session, delivered by Rob Santich, an Herbalist with 25 years experience was on resilience in children and the emerging factors in today’s society which place ever more pressures on children to be as resilient as ever.

Whether you agree with them or not here are some of the factors that really struck a chord with me

1. The fact that we live in an economy instead of a community, which values predatory capitalism. This capitalism breeds a culture of consumerism which, in turn, favours a false sense of self-esteem created by over-permissiveness. It also paints a picture of success which is dictated by the number of possessions a family owns. Advertising in the consumer world creates expectations which can never fully be achieved and which therefore results, in the long run, in low self esteem.

2.The role of the media in promoting the unrealistic aims of consumerism not only in advertising but in placing social identities on pedestals which promote narcissism as the ideal. 

3. Capitalization also favours urbanisation which physically reduces the amount of green spaces children can play in, thereby creating a disconnect with nature and corresponding increase in behavioural problems. This is interesting for me as I did quite a bit of research in my health promotion days on the link between adequate green spaces and physical activity. Evidently there is also a direct link on child mental health, not just via the increased exercise involved in improved access to green spaces.

4. An education system which currently has an ideology rooted in continuous standardised assessment rather than the promotion of free thought and opinion.  This current system is placing undue stress on the families of primary school children.

Arthur Ashe said “Success is a journey, not a destination” and if you consider childhood as the start of one long journey it seems to me these pressures create a generation of children that have very little hope of being happy, successful adults. As a society there needs to be a complete shift in consciousness, a re-evaluation of what is truly important in life. 

Ever wonder what a particular little organ or gland is up to in your body. My favourite website at the moment is ‘I Heart Guts’. it describes exactly what the bits of our body do with cheeky lil cartoons. I wish this was around when I was learning anatomy and physiology!

e.e. cummings (my favourite poet)

Watched this documentary the other night on the slaughter of dolphins in one small cove in Japan. It is must see viewing if you care about these intelligent animals but also a good example of how governments have the power to poison their their own people under the guise of food security or ‘pest control’ or whatever they like to call it (dolphins have high levels of mercury).

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ever looked at the long list of ingredients on a product and wondered what all those numbers were about? Based on the book by the same name by Bill Statham this ingenious app allows you to look up food and cosmetic additives either by their name or additive number and work out whether it really should be something you ingest or put on your body. It describes the uses of each chemical, potential effects on the body (eg allergen, toxin, carcinogen), symptoms it may cause and where else you might find it. It’s a handy little app to have whether you have chemical sensitivities, allergies, sensitive skin or simply want to be more mindful of the chemicals you expose yourself and your family to.

My puppy enjoying some winter sun ♥

So check out this gallery “Time” has published from the book “Hungry Beast”. It chronicles the amount and type of foods families from across the world purchase in one week. What I notice most is two things. The quantity of food varies significantly across countries (check out Chad versus Germany for example) and the more Western the family tends to be, the more processed the food choices become. The Americans, for example have very little fresh produce on their table whereas the family from Ecuador have nothing but fresh produce. It seems economic development comes with a price, more marketing, poor health and the environmental impact of all that packaging.

Standing Bear

Sidney Sheldon