What makes us well is just as important as treating illness

I have worked as a GP for nearly 20 years, and absorbed much learning form patient and professional experts. I’ve become increasingly interested in what makes us well, as opposed to what makes us ill.

Most of medical school training is focused on the diseases that make us ill, and the factors that contribute to this. The bugs that cause infection, raised blood pressure or sugar levels that cause heart attacks and strokes, smoking, inactivity, cancer.

Most of what I was taught to focus on was how to detect disease and when things are going wrong and what to do to treat these.

So most of my training and early career has been focused on illness and what we need to bring us back to ‘normal’ (whatever that is!). But what of the other side of the coin? What makes us really well, takes us from ‘normal’ to feeling vitalised and on top form, and keeps us there?

Of course we know some of this is about not doing the things that harm us, not smoking, moving more, and having the basics like good food, shelter and security. But there is more.

When people have studied this closely there is one factor that emerges as being more important than anything else…..I’ll call it ‘our sense of purpose’. It is clear that when we feel our lives have meaning and we feel we are contributing to something that we feel is worthwhile we do best. It is really harmful to our wellbeing to feel that we are useless, have no role to play, or are just a drain on others. This doesn’t have to be world changing, being a good parent or friend, being useful at work, can all contribute to our feeling of self worth.

Of course volunteering or working on a project you really believe in is a great way to achieve this, and finding ways for everyone to contribute now matter how small is important.

So I think if we want to encourage good health and wellbeing, then developing our local communities so everyone feels they have a role to play, and is part of creating something valuable, is so important. Sheffield is great at this, so many fantastic teams the believe in this way of living, lets do more on this together.

For further reading search “salutogenesis’ and ‘sense of coherence’.