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Essay on The Mind/Body Technique: Guided Imagery
The stress of medical education led to well-documented increases in depression, substance abuse, interpersonal relationship difficulties, and stress. Coping skills remain inadequate for many medical students or even decline as they progress through school (Ball, 2002). Rather than learning successful handling strategies, the ‘hidden curriculum’ teach students that self-denial is a necessary tool for survival and that high levels of stress are a normal part of life (Shapiro, 2000). While not only damaging to personal well being, these difficulties may follow students into their future clinical practice and lead to compromised patient care (Firth-Cozens, 2001). Patients in acute care settings often have emotional and physical stresses that are also experienced by family and significant others. Guided imagery, one of the most well studied integrative therapies, is used increasingly to improve patients' experiences and healthcare outcomes.
Mind-body techniques for stress reduction and relaxation, tools have been used for centuries to improve general well being and health (Benson, 1974). Mind-body medicine—including self-awareness, relaxation, meditation, guided imagery, biofeedback, nutrition, physical exercise and movement—are among the best known and most widely used of the complementary, alternative or integrative approaches to healthcare. Guided imagery is a simple, low-cost therapeutic tool that can help counteract the fears and anxieties of patients and their family members. (Tusek, 1977). Research indicates that simple, non-invasive methods, such as guided imagery allow patients an opportunity for a temporary “mentally escapes" prior, during and after procedures such as cardiac catheterization, angioplasty and surgery.
History of Guided Imagery
Imagery has strong physiological results that are precisely related to the healing systems of the body. Research on the omnipresent placebo effect, the standard to which people compare all other modalities, has provided some of the strongest facts for the power of the imagination in healing...........
