Healing of mind, body and soul (Part One)

This is the first of a double piece exploring mental health.

I wrote several weeks ago about the importance and significance of the King openly sharing his cancer diagnosis and few people will have failed to be moved in some way by the Princess of Wales doing the same last week.

I absolutely identify with the many emotional responses to the Princess’ video message: sadness for her personal suffering, empathy for the natural fears of her family and outrage that she had seemingly been forced into making a public statement to stem the tide of outrageous accusations and speculation.

I have been around the PR-block enough to know that every detail of that video message (including it even being a video message) would have been subjected to hours of meticulous planning to ensure it did the job it needed to do, and it seems it did. I hope she and her family are now allowed some peace and privacy.

That said, the immediate stream of faux apologies that followed her message from so many of those vicious accusers and speculators re-ignites my sense of anger. They all come with a subtext of ‘Now we‘ve seen her and know what it is, and that it’s cancer, we will leave her alone, nothing else to see here’.

Let’s remember that on her behalf we were originally told she was having abdominal surgery for non-cancerous reasons and would probably need until Easter to get better, but that wasn’t enough. It took the Princess herself sharing that it was ‘major’ surgery and that, as could happen with any surgery, something else presented itself that needs further medical attention and treatment. It wasn’t OK to just be unwell, have an operation and then navigate recovery with all the risks that entails. It seemingly took disclosing the risk of cancer to make it acceptable.

It’s genuinely depressing that we live in a world where so many people assume someone is lying until they prove and share their story and that we seem to set a level of acceptability for illness and personal suffering that must come with physical pain or disease and should have a recognisable label.

I am trying to imagine a world where someone in such a high profile role might share that the trauma of major surgery has brought on severe mental illness, which I have personally witnessed happen with a close friend. If a public figure disclosed their need to undertake a period of psycho-therapy or even psychiatric treatment as an unexpected consequence of a major operation, would that be accepted and their privacy respected? I hope so but I fear not.

These cruelties aside, my abiding response to the video message is one of admiration for a public figure who made themselves vulnerable and in doing so has, I feel, implicitly started to shift the dial on some of these more profound issues.

The words from the Princess’ message that stuck with me most were these: “I am well and getting stronger every day by focusing on the things that will help me heal; in my mind, body and spirits.”

In these words I hear a strong message about taking a more enlightened and holistic view on health and wellbeing.?She was clear that she is physically healing and being preventatively treated to protect her physical health but referencing healing of her mind and spirits is a call for better understanding and greater kindness. This is what makes this message so important.

I have written many times about the healing and restorative power of creativity and this is utterly embedded in all we do at Norwich Theatre. We frequently ask audiences if they feel happier after their theatre visit and nine times out of 10 the answer is yes. Coming to the theatre, like doing any activity you enjoy or being with a chosen community of people or turning to a religious faith, is about ‘raising the spirits’. As a pluralist and liberal society, we have this covered in this country and I am grateful for that.?

On the other hand, it is an issue of huge concern to me the extent to which the final part of the Princess’ tri-partite view on health and healing has such a long way to go. At a national level we are living through an ever-deepening mental health crisis and the issues around the lack of parity between mental health and physical health are systemic and need urgently addressing.