Let me use as an example of our process the work the Foundation has done in the area of mind-body health. When we began to shape our health program four years ago, we looked for issues in the health field that had major importance, inadequate funding, and real promise for development and public benefit. We concluded that the mind-body relationship met those criteria. One of our Trustees,James Cummings, had knowledge of the field, and we consulted with a number of experts to round out our understanding. We found that a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrated that mental and emotional states can cause or exacerbate illness.
Interventions aimed at mental states can improve health and speed recovery.
David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford, had shown that psychological support groups for women with metastasized breast cancer could extend their lives significantly-as well as improving their quality of life, reducing pain, and increasing productivity. Dean Ornish had demonstrated that a regimen of diet, meditation, exercise, and group support could reverse serious heart disease. While these findings involved small groups of people and were not conclusive, they suggested a powerful set of tools that were too little acknowledged in the world of orthodox medicine. There are some obvious reasons why these approaches were not readily accepted. Doctors are trained to treat acute disease, and to look for pharmaceutical or surgical interventions to cure particular conditions- not to deal with the emotional distress associated with chronic illness.