Melbourne Integrative Medicine Conference points to holistic future for healthcare

There's general interest in how spiritual treatment works and who can be healed this way. Family physician, Dr Nelie Johnson answers her own question on what might be the character traits and spiritual qualities of those people who are most likely to heal – a possible Type H personality (H is for healable). Jesus was pretty clear on the subject too, in his teachings on the thoughts and actions we need to cultivate within.

We need to learn how to grow spirituality so we can lift ourselves out of problems. It's interesting that Jesus was able to heal insane people, not by focusing on the problem, but by revealing their true spiritual nature and seeing it so clearly that the problem was gone. To be mentally healthy is to be in touch with the deeper reality of being one with the all-good God.

I've had fairly good experiences with health practitioners over the years, and really powerful character changing experiences that often went hand-in-hand with physical healings when I've engaged Christian Science health practitioners.

However, it might be a while before the majority of us seek treatment for health issues through purely spiritual means. So, what will the integrated healthcare and health practitioner of just 20 years down the track look like? Here's a wish-list that might fit with your healthcare aspirations:

• Patients are treated with the utmost love and care in practice rooms, nursing facilities, hospitals and homes;
• Ample time is given by nurses and doctors to talking about patients' spiritual needs as well as their physical needs;
• Health professionals will have reconnected to the heart of their practice;
• Health professions provide truly compassionate, holistic, mindful and healing healthcare;
• Practitioners won't 'depress mental energy in their patients with dire predictions' (Mary Baker Eddy), but will confidently see crises as catalysts for growth and understanding and as opportunities for healing and peace.

As much fun as it is to participate in the Myers-Briggs personality evaluation, don't be so quick to type-caste yourself, with all that personality-identification and -ownership implies. It seems that growth and change are not only desirable but are more than possible, as spirituality is gradually integrated into and adopted as part of a workable, holistic public healthcare that meets the needs of the present time, and into the future.