Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture

 February 6, 2025 @ 7:30 pm - 10:30 pm

Dr. Gabor Maté will be presenting at the Adelaide Convention Centre on February 6, 2025, 7:30pm – 10:30pm. Based on his latest book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture.

He writes that half of North American adults suffer from a chronic illness – a fact that Western medicine views largely in terms of individual predispositions and biological causation. Mate has argued that Western medicine imposes two separations, neither tenable scientifically. First, it separates the mind from the body, largely assuming that most chronic illnesses have nothing to do with people’s emotional and psychological experiences. And yet, a large and irrefutable body of research has clearly shown that physiologic and behavioural functioning of human beings can be understood only if we integrate our body functions with those of the mind: functions such as awareness, emotions, our interpretations of and responses to events, and our relationships with other people. Second, Western practice views people’s health as separate from the social environment, ignoring social determinants of health such as class, gender (including transgender & gender diverse people), economic status, and race (particularly Indigenous Australians). Such factors, in reality, are more important influences on health and longevity than individual predispositions and personal factors such as genes, cholesterol levels, blood pressure and so on.

This talk explains how a society dedicated to material pursuits (one determined by capitalism) rather than genuine human needs and spiritual values stresses its members, undermines healthy child development, and dooms many to chronic illness, from diabetes to heart disease, from autoimmune conditions to cancer.

It is my view, as a clinical psychologist, that issues that bring people to therapy, are determined by the developmental and social environments that individuals are raised in. We inherit survival strategies but for many of us, we haven't mastered the ability to cope better with living in a harsh world.