Politics
Health
Psychology
Mental Health
Healthcare
Community Support
Psychiatry
Social Responsibility
Community Services
Healthcare Policy
What many psychiatric patients need is not a drug but community, economic support, and sense of purpose. “But we can’t prescribe that,” it’s said. Why not? Why can’t we build community health worker systems in which receiving care involves being empowered to give it to others? 1/
Every day as I care for patients and again run up against the profound limits of reductive neurobiological approaches to suffering, I think about the entirely different world we could make if we collectively embraced accompaniment as ethics and policy. 2/
bostonreview.net
bostonreview.net
When @gregggonsalves+@akapczynski called for a national community health worker corps (embraced & then abandoned by Biden, who has prioritized police instead), it wasn’t as just short-term pandemic policy. This framework is essential for everyday care. 3/
bostonreview.net
bostonreview.net
.@MRamos_histmed’s excellent recent essay works well with the two above policy-focused pieces. It usefully summarizes much of how we’ve arrived at where we now sit as a sick society that’s continually doubling down on false promises of biomedical fixes. 4/
bostonreview.net
bostonreview.net
We routinely pack drugs into a “polypill” to make consuming them more convenient & to improve adherence. Can we now design policy & systems to offer what @adamcifu described to me as a “social polypill” that meets patients’ basic needs for community & material security? 5/
Loading suggestions...