Fourth Opinion: HealthSupplement readers value a reliable source of information, writes Kevin O'Sullivan
I lik 2 go Nude, esp on Tusdas. Darn - this texting is overwhelming our lives and my spelling is going to pot! Take two: I love to go to Nude café on Suffolk Street, Dublin, particularly on Tuesdays. If my stomach is up to it, a good strong coffee sets my day off with a minor high.
The mushrooming of mod/Green coffee houses has been great for business; the newspaper variety I mean. It's heartening to see how many people get their fix of caffeine, croissant (high fat but with medium Glycaemic Index value) and newspaper - The Irish Times preferably, of course!
What makes my high go stratospheric is when on Tuesdays I observe the Health Supplement disappearing into bags, pockets and briefcases. One day, they were all gone by 11 a.m.. It's the modern equivalent (and much more morally acceptable) of tearing that page out of a library reference book coinciding with a loud cough.
It's at such moments I realise what the Health Supplement has become. In an age of multimedia bombardment of the patient/consumer, it has become a prime health source for so many readers when other material can often be blatantly unreliable, alarmist or without context. It coincides with a new demand for quality information on health and wellbeing. The new century has spawned unprecedented demand for explanation, choice and empowerment applied to the broad spectrum of health.
It has also coincided with a time when transparency and accountability are a given, likewise frank detail where service does not match reasonable expectation. Often there is a need to explore complementary medicine as so many claim it is transforming their lives, even when it's not known why and they may be subject to ridicule. Is a combination of complementary and orthodox ways the new frontier of treatment and, where appropriate, prevention?
For those working in health services, the supplement has become an important avenue for outlining the nature of their work and for highlighting their concerns about society and, unfortunately, a health system too often in crisis; impaired by inequity, obfuscation and indignity. In all of this, two incongruities repeatedly surface. Firstly, the Republic produces some of the best doctors, nurses and healthcare specialists in the world, who are capable of delivering and developing the most sophisticated healthcare available on the planet. Yet for too many consumers/patients their firsthand experience of our health service is a bad one and unsatisfactory by any quality standard. A creaking system remains overdue for reform despite clear diagnosis and prognosis in a series of costly government reports.
Secondly, we are not producing enough doctors though we are happy to train hundreds from abroad at any one time and charge them huge fees. We cling to the notion that top point-scorers in the Leaving Cert make the best doctors and seem incapable of acknowledging someone could be an exceptional medic by instinct or by having "doctor genes" in their bloodlines.
But this is a time to mark our successful birth as confirmed by small indicators; seeing articles lifted wholesale from the supplement and now appearing in high profile health websites across America; emails from readers in Australia, and talk of a new option in treating a disease - "I saw it in this week's HealthSupplement." In addition, the scale of original thought from columnists and contributors has been awesome, reflecting inspiring variety in intellect and human spirit. For health should not always be about being ill. It's about finding ways of coping and moving forward and ensuring wellbeing for everyone no matter where they live on the globe.
There must be a downside? Unfortunately, I have succumbed to a disease that afflicts most medical students: mild hypochrondriaitis triggered by reading 82 per cent of conditions cited on our pages. And when an avalanche of self-help books, spiritual guides, eating-your-way-to-health volumes, and bibles on parenting: keeping your teens out of trouble occasionally find their way home, it's infectious. Then you hear: "So I'm that troublesome teen?" or "Is Watch Your Weight some kind of crude hint?" How mistaken notions easily take hold.
Talking of teens and trouble brings back the words of psychologist and resident columnist Tony Bates. Powerful in their simplicity (and paraphrased below), they are about to become my mantra in such situations and are pertinent beyond such relationships: Life is tough sometimes. It is perfectly understandable to feel down after certain events. It IS normal occasionally to be depressed a little given what is thrown at us. You may have cause in wanting to hit your annoying little sister/scream at the boss/throw away the offending car driver's keys away in a traffic jam, but that is not acceptable behaviour in any book.
If you haven't discerned by now, this special issue marks the supplement's first year in existence. It has a flavour of issues over the past 12 months and throws a little light on some of the people who contribute to or work regularly on the publication - their personalities, backgrounds and even their foibles - but with many of the usual elements in an attempt to ensure the weekly fix remains compelling.
• Kevin O'Sullivan is editor of the Health Supplement