Finding Soho

TW: self-harm This is an incredibly sad report. The tragic circumstances surrounding this man's death are heartbreaking. But it is clear that he was someone who was determined to seek help. He was an ABI survivor who underwent post-acute rehabilitation and expressed his intentions to persevere and live his best life in a succinct and powerful way. He was determined to continue to heal and recover. And, from the brief glimpse into his life that this report offers, it is apparent that he was engaging with mental health professionals in order to persevere with his recovery. It is sad that he experienced the crisis and desolation that led to his death. It sounds like he was courageous, willing and able to seek help when he needed it most. This tragic story indicates that mental health and psychiatric nursing has the potential to contribute in a powerful way to securing and safeguarding lives at critical moments. Rehabilitation care too is such an important field. This is where people ...

 “We have seen that imagining an act engages the same motor and sensory programs that are involved in doing it. We have long viewed our imaginative life with a kind of sacred awe: as noble, pure, immaterial, and ethereal, cut off from our material brain. Now we cannot be so sure about where to draw the line between them. Everything your “immaterial” mind imagines leaves material traces. Each thought alters the physical state of your brain synapses at a microscopic level. Each time you imagine moving your fingers across the keys to play the piano, you alter the tendrils in your living brain. These experiments are not only delightful and intriguing, they also overturn the centuries of confusion that have grown out of the work of the French philosopher René Descartes, who argued that mind and brain are made of different substances and are governed by different laws. The brain, he claimed, was a physical, material thing, existing in space and obeying the laws of physics. The mind (or t...

How does one manage biographical confusion?  The past is a different country - they do things differently there. LP Hartley was absolutely spot-on.  It can be difficult to explain biographical transitions and new roles - at what point did one stop working on one thing and then start on another? How did that come about? When did one start to retrain? These are all difficult to encapsulate in a brief profile.  In the past, people's career choices rarely evolved. Now, changing career or disciplinary pathways appears to be quite common. But one has to manage this well because the confusion that may be generated may be quite detrimental to one's interests.  I don't think that anyone needs to explain why they shifted gears. Everyone should have the freedom to shift gears when they are able to do so and do it at their own pace. But it can be challenging to rationalise this for others.  There are so many people today who are retraining later on in life. They may have al...

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended life in a lot of ways. Its impact on a lot of people's lives has been enormous.  A lot of people are in distress. A lot of people are angry - angry about the pandemic's effects on their lives, and the restrictions that have been imposed.  And some of it is, seemingly, being channeled into aggression against random strangers in public places.  While it's neither particularly important, given all that's happening right now, nor something that can be quantified, there is some palpable aggression in the air and this is sometimes manifesting as racially-charged aggression.  There was some media coverage of racist incidents in various places, including Melbourne, early on in the pandemic. Since then, there hasn't been much information about such incidents.  However, I have seen some (what I suppose is) racially-charged aggression.  I've come across racist graffiti and vandalism.  I've come across some road rage that may pote...

Among other factors, one factor that distinguishes health services research in developed countries from health services research in developing countries is that the former uses a strong implementation science framework to drive and measure quality improvement. There is a strong emphasis on measuring and assessing service delivery and the implementation of initiatives. Busy clinicians don’t always have the time to measure and assess service delivery, or to undertake implementation research. Healthcare managers can help to do this work but the discipline of healthcare management does not really exist outside developed countries. It has also been quite enlightening to see how qualitative research methods and approaches are used in healthcare research (for example, to understand patient experiences or clinicians’ perspectives on barriers to and enablers of quality improvement) in developed countries. Sometimes, systems-related quality improvement initiatives can make a huge difference, ev...

Is there space for reflection in this increasingly crowded and fast-paced world? The world seems to be hurtling towards a crowded and busy future, and I feel, increasingly, like I'm falling behind. This is because I am becoming increasingly aware of the importance of reflection and connection with the present. I have experienced a powerful disruption that has forced me to reconsider my disconnection from family and community, from a sense of being embedded in the lives of my loved ones - I have experienced something that has made me very conscious of the fact that time is limited. And, whenever I become engrossed in the minutae of day-to-day living, and planning for the future, I slip back into an unreflective mode, oblivious to the passing of time and the passing of opportunities for connecting with those who matter. This is not enough. 

What turns anyone into a ‘cog in the machine’ of repressive state violence, and how does this happen? The philosopher Hannah Arendt investigated this after the Holocaust. How does a person become a weapon of the state, executing actions and inflicting violence (ostensibly legitimately) on behalf of the state, particularly when they know that the victims are innocent (for want of a better word) fellow citizens who have come together to fight for justice. I know that a lot of people would like to claim that they would be immune to the process if they found themselves in that position; that they would resist the state’s demands and injunctions, and not become a tool of repressive violence. But can one really choose to resist at the crucial moment? Can we suddenly break free from the conceptual, physical and economic bonds that tether us to everything that we know as good, true and worthy of obedience? Sure, maybe there were people - in many different historical contexts - who fully belie...