CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS
I am currently researching and writing about biopsychosocial - as well as iatrogenic - contributions to maternal fear and stress during pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood and their effect on the mother and child’s short - and long-term mental and physical health, patterns of attachment, and rates of individual and family violence.
Expanding on my dissertation research, I claim that we - as a society - must embody a holistic and humanistic approach to health - including our conceptions of wellness and dis-ease - and accept that that the mind, body, and spirit are inextricably linked and must exist in harmony if the body is going to function at peak capacity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of obstetrics.
In addition to examining the role of the 'nocebo effect' and iatrogenically-induced fear and stress during the pre- and post-natal period, I examine the role of the brain in directing women's birth experiences and argue that we need to actively create an environment which will protect the woman's neocortex from (over) stimulation so that she can release to her primal instincts - an essential aspect of birth physiology which is neither recognized nor practiced in Western medicine. This is especially critical since research has consistently shown that high levels of intervention and the socialized passivity of women during childbirth have not resulted in better outcomes for mothers or babies.
As I discuss in my dissertation, the potential for harnessing human thought to make improvements in health and healthcare decision-making is enormous, yet it remains a largely untapped resource. During the last decade, new methods and findings in neuroscience, neuroimaging, and molecular biology have discovered connections between emotions and disease, the brain and the immune system, and the mind and the body. Most facinating is the previosly unrecognized connection between the various realms of socio-cultural programming, beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and behaviors and their potential for dictating the course of various health-related events and experiences.
I engage the work of Karr-Morse & Wiley (1997) and others who offer evidence that violent behavior is fundamentally linked to abuse and neglect in the first two years of life; Coulters (1990) work on the connection between neurologic damage, vaccinations, and the present high level of violence, and even criminality, in today's society; Jaffe's research on immunomics - the functional study of how the immune system responds to the world outside itself; and Varney (1981 & 1991) who posit that the fetal environment, both biological and psychological, shapes the very strategies a person uses during the rest of their lives. I conclude, as Farrant (1987) does, that incidents of spiritual trauma at the cellular level have the potential for setting up lifelong feelings of loss and yearning, thereby directly and indirectly impacting a lifetime of interpersonal relationships.
By elucidating the link between what happens in the brain to the physical body response we discover enormous potential for changing beliefs and behaviors and thus improve women's and babies experience of pregnancy and birth as well as improve the short- and long-term health of mothers, children, families, and our communities.
"There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind...and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking."
~ William James
"A belief is a thought you have had so many times you take it as a truth."
~ Wayne Dyer
Expanding on my dissertation research, I claim that we - as a society - must embody a holistic and humanistic approach to health - including our conceptions of wellness and dis-ease - and accept that that the mind, body, and spirit are inextricably linked and must exist in harmony if the body is going to function at peak capacity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of obstetrics.
In addition to examining the role of the 'nocebo effect' and iatrogenically-induced fear and stress during the pre- and post-natal period, I examine the role of the brain in directing women's birth experiences and argue that we need to actively create an environment which will protect the woman's neocortex from (over) stimulation so that she can release to her primal instincts - an essential aspect of birth physiology which is neither recognized nor practiced in Western medicine. This is especially critical since research has consistently shown that high levels of intervention and the socialized passivity of women during childbirth have not resulted in better outcomes for mothers or babies.
As I discuss in my dissertation, the potential for harnessing human thought to make improvements in health and healthcare decision-making is enormous, yet it remains a largely untapped resource. During the last decade, new methods and findings in neuroscience, neuroimaging, and molecular biology have discovered connections between emotions and disease, the brain and the immune system, and the mind and the body. Most facinating is the previosly unrecognized connection between the various realms of socio-cultural programming, beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and behaviors and their potential for dictating the course of various health-related events and experiences.
I engage the work of Karr-Morse & Wiley (1997) and others who offer evidence that violent behavior is fundamentally linked to abuse and neglect in the first two years of life; Coulters (1990) work on the connection between neurologic damage, vaccinations, and the present high level of violence, and even criminality, in today's society; Jaffe's research on immunomics - the functional study of how the immune system responds to the world outside itself; and Varney (1981 & 1991) who posit that the fetal environment, both biological and psychological, shapes the very strategies a person uses during the rest of their lives. I conclude, as Farrant (1987) does, that incidents of spiritual trauma at the cellular level have the potential for setting up lifelong feelings of loss and yearning, thereby directly and indirectly impacting a lifetime of interpersonal relationships.
By elucidating the link between what happens in the brain to the physical body response we discover enormous potential for changing beliefs and behaviors and thus improve women's and babies experience of pregnancy and birth as well as improve the short- and long-term health of mothers, children, families, and our communities.
"There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind...and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking."
~ William James
"A belief is a thought you have had so many times you take it as a truth."
~ Wayne Dyer
