The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness

People stop looking for answers when they find one they can relate to.

Western medicine’s love of drawing people into diagnostic categories and applying disease names to small differences and minor bodily changes is not specific to functional disorders – it is a general trend. Pre-diabetes, polycystic ovaries, some cancers and many more conditions have all been subject to the problem of over-inclusive diagnosis. My biggest concern in this regard is the degree to which many people are wholly unaware of the subjective nature of the medical classification of disease. If a person is told they have this or that disorder, they assume it must be right. The Latin names we give to things and the shiny scanning machines make it look as if there is more authority than actually exists. To a certain extent, Sienna pursued each diagnosis she was given, but other people have diagnoses thrust upon them, having no idea that there might be anything controversial about it – and having no idea that they have a choice. Western medicine’s hold on people, and its sense of being systematic and accurate, makes it a powerful force in the transmission of cultural concepts of what constitutes wellness or ill health. But Western medicine is just as enslaved to fads and trends as any other tradition of medicine.

Memory is tricky; stories evolve in the telling and retelling, with contributions from many parties.

Functional neurological and psychosomatic disorders are often a manifestation of a maladaptive response to the mistakes made by the human system of perception.

A person looking for help must keep in mind what help there is.

Pathology is a fact independent of the observer, but how one responds to symptoms is drawn from knowledge and experience.

We physicalize mood, emotional well-being and even personality. Confident people stand with confidence.

The brain is a cultured organ. It depends on exposure to learn. Only a small part of learning is conscious.

At birth, the brain is a blank canvas that is full of possibility. A newborn has more brain cells than an adult.

Illness is a socially patterned behaviour, far more than people realize. How a person interprets and reacts to bodily changes depends... Personal and societal role modes create expectations of health... Our brains are wired through experience to respond in a certain way to certain provocation.

If you can't say what is happening in the brain, nobody will care.

The [asylum-seeking] children are embodying a sociocultural phenomenon. Their story has been written across nations, in a combination that has made them unique. It has been impacted by poor social circumstances, poor nutrition, epigenetics, abusers, authority figures, politicians, parents, doctors and the media.

... alternating between anticipation and despondency. That has physical consequences.

Biological correlates are often used to give credence to the experience of psychosomatic disorders. An objective change on a blood test or scan allows others to believe in the suffering.

... [resignation syndrome was] like being in a dream that she didn't want to wake up from.

The children translate for the parents ... They are their parents' conduit to the new world.

That's how modern medicine works: disease impresses people; illness with no evidence of the disease does not. Psychological illness, psychosomatic and functional symptoms are the least respected of medical problems.

Every medical problem is a combination of the biological, the psychological and the social. It is only the weighting of each that changes.

The mind is a function of the brain and is created from biology.

And then came that growing scourge of the Western world: the inability to reliably distinguish opinion from fact.

That is Western medicine's culture-bound syndrome - we make sick people. We medicalize difference, even when no objective pathology is available to be found.