By John Kapp, johnkapp@btinternet.com 20.2.13
1

Give a man a pill, and you mask his symptoms for a day. Teach him meditation, and he can heal his life.’ ( www.sectco.org)
page
Covering letter to Rt Hon Norman Lamb MP, Minister of State 4 for mental health and care.
Covering letter to Dr Becky Jarvis, lead board member of 5
Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group
1 Abstract 6
2 Executive summary - conclusions and recommendations 6
3 Why am I writing this paper? 8
4 What is the prevalence of mental illness and dementia? 9
5 What is the cause of mental illness and dementia? 10
6 The model of the person as a computer system 11
7 The traffic light analogy for states of consciousness 12
8 The hormonal responses to danger 12
9 Sickness is caused by the yellow and red traffic lights. 13
10 Drug treatments for mental illness are counterproductive 14
11 Talking therapies 15
12 What can we do to improve our mental health? 16
PART 2 SOLUTION – MEDICATION TO MEDITATION
13 Solution – Prevent, heal and cure mental illness by learning mindfulness 18
14 What is meditation and mindfulness? 18
15 The bad news - neural pathways (hard wiring) determine our behaviour 19
16 The good new – neural pathways can be changed by neuro-plasticity 19
(soft wiring)
17 How can we rewire our brains? 20
18 What is meditation? 20
19 What is mindfulness (vipassana)? 21
20 What is mindlessness? 22
21 What is health and illness etc in the computer system model? 23
22 Why can’t GPs prescribe MBCT courses for anxious and depressed patients? 22
23 Present contract provision of the MBCT course 22
24 The disconnect between supply and demand for the MBCT course 23
25 What is the present waiting time for the MBCT course? 24
26 How can we reducing health inequalities? 25
27 Opening up the mental health market to Any Qualified Provider 25
PART 3 PROVIDING THE CONDITIONS FOR HEALING
28 How can prevention, healing, and curing be promoted? 26
29 What is the concept of soul? 26
30 What is therapy? 27
31 The two doors into the mindbody 27
32 From where do the two paths come? 28
33 Why music and movement can be therapeutic 29
34 Healing is freeing the soul from the possession by the mind 30
35 Lovers versus Buddhas 31
2

36 The enhanced sandwich MBCT course 33
37 Summary of a trial of positivity before and after MBCT courses in 2012 34
38 SECTCo’s menu of therapeutic meditation courses 35
39 How do these courses work to prevent, heal and cure? 36
40 Conclusions and recommendations 37
41 Bibliography 38
Appendix 1 Press release of the LSE report 18.6.12 39
Appendix 2 Extract from SECTCo’s bid of 23.7.12 40
References 54
Appendix 3 General meditation courses brochure 54
Appendix 4 Halving of the city’s public health statistics 59
FIGURE 1 S0W DRIVEN MAD BY CAPTIVITY 9
FIGURE 2 SOW BLISSED OUT IN A MEADOW 10
FIGURE 3 PET AND CHILD BLISSED OUT 10
FIGURE 4 COMPUTER SYSTEM MODEL FOR PEOPLE
FIGURE 5 YIN YANG CHINESE SYMBOL 11
FIGURE 6 HORMONAL RESPONSES TO DANGER. THE TRAFFIC LIGHT 11
STATES OF ALERTNESS
FIGURE 7 MIND FULL OF MINDFUL? 18
FIGURE 8 THE THIRD EYE WATCHING THE MINDBODY (PSYCHOSOMA) 20
FIGURE 9 THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN PROVIDER-CENTRED AND 24
PATIENT-CENTRED PERSPECTIVES ON THE SUPPLY AND DEMAND FOR THE MBCT
COURSE
FIGURE 10 LEFT AND RIGHT HEMISHPERES OF THE BRAIN 28
FIGURE 11 THE HEALING TRIANGLE 29
FIGURE 12 DOORS TO THE MIND AND BODY WATCHED BY THE THIRD EYE 30
FIGURE 13 THE TWO WINGS AWARENESS AND LOVE 31
FIGURE 14 KRISHNA PLAYING ON HIS FLUTE 31
FIGURE 15 MASTER OVER SERVANT 32
FIGURE 16 HEALTHY SOUL DOMINATING HEALTHY MIND AND HEALTHY BODY 32
FIGURE 17 UNHEALTHY MIND DOMINATING SOUL AND BODY 33
FIGURE 18 UNHEALTHY BODY DOMINATING SOUL AND MIND 33
3

Social Enterprise Complementary Therapy Company
Mission: To provide patients with their statutory right under the NHS constitution to
National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE)-recommended complementary treatment to promote wellness, prevent illness and remove health inequalities in the city of Brighton and
Hove. Our logo is the wounded healer, Chiron.
Registered number 7319842 From the secretary, John Kapp
Website www.sectco.org Registered address 22, Saxon Rd Hove,
info@sectco.org E.Sussex, BN3 4LE johnkapp@btinternet.com 01273 417997
20.2.13
Rt Hon Norman Lamb MP
Minister of State for Mental Health and Care Services
Department of Health, Richmond House
79, Whitehall, London SW1A 2NS
Dear Mr Lamb
YOUR WEBINAR ON WED 23.1.13
Thank you for holding the webinar on Wed 23.1.13, which I listened to with great interest. I am very pleased that you are tackling so vigorously the problem of improving access to psychological therapy (IAPT) for mental sickness, which is badly needed. I sent in the following question, which you did not have time to answer:
‘Is the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) board in Brighton and Hove acting lawfully when they answered on
15.1.13: 'We have no plans,' in answer to my public question: 'When does the CCG board intend to reduce the waiting time for NICE-recommended drug-free complementary therapy (such as the Mindfulness Based Cognitive
Therapy (MBCT) 8 week course for depression, and spinal manipulation and acupuncture for low back pain) by opening up the market to third sector providers, as requested on www.sectco.org
?'
Note
Under the NHS constitution, patients have the statutory right to NICE-recommended treatments if their doctor says it is clinically appropriate. Depression and low back pain account for 2 out of 3 consultations in primary care, and the above drug-free complementary treatments should be considered and prescribed for most of them. However, GPs cannot prescribe these treatments, as the waiting time is excessive. We call upon the CCG to reduce this by opening up the market. ‘
I believe that the mental health of the 3/4 million who were reported by Lord Layard as losing out in the LSE report
(18.6.12), can be dramatically improved by providing them with the NICE-recommended Mindfulness Based
Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) 8 week course free at the point of use on GP prescription. The MBCT course is Cognitive
Behaviour Therapy (CBT) with meditation, and it is much more cost-effective than CBT because:
 One facilitator can teach up to 20 patients at a time.
 Patients gain peer support from each other.
 Meditation goes beyond the mind to change attitudes, which ‘download’ more functional behaviour programming, which can prevent, heal, and cure long term conditions.
I enclose a hard copy of a paper (54 pages) titled: ‘Can mental sickness be prevented, healed and cured? From medication to meditation.’ answering: ‘yes’, and making recommendations which I hope that mental health commissioners in Brighton and Hove will pilot, and throughout England will implement.
With best wishes
Yours sincerely John Kapp (company secretary)
4

Board of directors: Penny Kinton (chairman) Anne Pether (finance) Martina Roe (clinical) Mike Turpin (technical)
John Kapp (company secretary) Lizzie Beckett, Tony Bell, Bob Bleach, Paul Jenner, Tom Sydenham
Social Enterprise Complementary Therapy Company
Mission: To provide patients with their statutory right under the NHS constitution to
National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE)-recommended complementary treatment to promote wellness, prevent illness and remove health inequalities in the city of Brighton and
Hove. Our logo is the wounded healer, Chiron.
Registered number 7319842 From the secretary, John Kapp
Website www.sectco.org Registered address 22, Saxon Rd Hove,
info@sectco.org E.Sussex, BN3 4LE johnkapp@btinternet.com 01273 417997
20.2.13
Dr Becky Jarvis, Clinical lead for mental health
Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group
Lanchester House, Trafalgar St, Brighton BN1 4FU
Dear Dr Jarvis
You may remember that we met at a Gateway Live meeting last December, when I and my fellow director, Bob Bleach sat at your table. I have been corresponding about mental health with
Dr Geraldine Hoban and other commissioners for the last three years, and have written several previous papers. I have pleasure in enclosing my latest paper, ‘Can mental sickness be prevented, healed and cured? From medication to meditation.’ It asks you to: a) Pilot a mental health service to prevent, heal and cure mental sickness, reduce the staff sickness rate in the NHS and other public services, and reduce health inequalities. b) Mass-commission and mass-provide a menu of therapeutic courses for depressed patients on GP prescription, and for sick public sector staff on occupational health doctor prescription. c) Finance these courses (£3-12 mpa) out of the mental health drugs budget (£25 mpa) under a programme called: ‘medication to meditation.’ d) Negotiate with the directors of the Social Enterprise Complementary Therapy Company
(SECTCo) to provide these courses according to their bid dated 23.7.12 for the Community
Mental Health Support Prospectus. (enclosed as appendix 2)
Please acknowledge receipt. I look forward to your response.
With best wishes Yours sincerely John Kapp (company secretary)
Cc Helen Curr, lead member of Brighton Integrated Care Service responsible for the Wellbeing Service
Cllr Rob Jarratt, chair of the Health and Wellbeing Board, and Cllrs Ken Norman, Jayne Bennett
5

Board of directors: Penny Kinton (chairman) Martina Roe (clinical) Anne Pether (finance) Mike Turpin (technical)
John Kapp (company secretary) Lizzie Beckett, Tony Bell, Bob Bleach, Paul Jenner, Tom Sydenham .
Paper for the Rt Hon Norman Lamb MP, minister of state for mental health and care, and mental health commissioners. 20.2.13
By John Kapp, johnkapp@btinternet.com
‘Give a man a pill, and you mask his symptoms for a day. Teach him meditation, and he can heal his life.’ ( www.sectco.org
)
1 Abstract
This paper calls for Brighton and Hove commissioners to: a) Pilot a mental health service to prevent, heal and cure mental sickness, reduce staff sickness rate in the NHS and other public services, and reduce health inequalities. b) Mass-commission and mass-provide a menu of therapeutic courses for depressed patients on GP prescription, and for sick public sector staff on occupational health doctor prescription. c) Finance these courses out of the mental health drugs budget (£4-12 mpa) under a programme called: ‘medication to meditation.’ d) Negotiate with the directors of the Social Enterprise Complementary Therapy Company
(SECTCo) to provide these courses according to their bid dated 23.7.12 for the Community
Mental Health Support Prospectus.
2 Executive summary – conclusions and recommendations
a) The purpose of this paper is to propose to the mental health leads of Clinical Commissioning
Groups (CCGs) a practical solution to the problem of mass-providing cost-effective drug-free treatments for mental sickness suffered by 1 in 3 patients in primary care. This issue was identified by Lord Layard et al in the London School of Economics (LSE) report (18.6.12) titled:
‘How mental illness loses out in the NHS’. This shows that the NHS is failing to treat 3/4 million mentally sick patients, which has rightly pushed mental health and dementia to the top of the health agenda. This paper answers the title question: ‘Yes, mental sickness can be prevented, healed and cured by teaching patients self-help tools to manage their own stress.
b) Definitions of terms. The terms in the title: ‘prevent, heal, cure’ can only be understood in the holistic model of health, which requires expansion of the medical model to the computer system. Health is wholeness and harmony (compatability) between the person’s 4 component parts: body= hardware; mind (ego, left brain) = software; soul (right brain) = operator; spirit
(life force, environment, relationships) = internet.
Healing = download of more functional software at a healing moment when the patient is relaxed, in an Altered State of Consciousness (ASC) It is felt as an ‘aha’ moment of revelation which changes their attitude, enabling a lifestyle change to a more functional behaviour programme. Our neural pathways are not hard wired, but soft-wired, under ‘neuro-plasticity’. If patients practice the new attitude for at least 6 weeks, (40 days, which is the average life of a neuron) their brain rewires itself, and a permanent cure is achieved.
c) Summary of conclusions
6

i) Drug treatments for mentally sick patients are generally counterproductive - making patients worse, not better. Drugs only alleviate symptoms. The words ‘heal’ and ‘cure’ are 4 letter words in the NHS, because they require addressing the cause, which hitherto the NHS has not attempted. Drugs generally do more harm than good by preventing patients from making the attitude and lifestyle changes they need to heal and cure, and adding to their symptoms with side effects. ii) Doctors know that the cause of mental sickness is stress, (manifesting as distress) which is self-imposed from the attitude and lifestyle of the patient. It is caused by habitual hyper-arousal for too much of the time, causing excessive sympathetic-based hormone reactions. These are mostly adrenaline, flight/fight, manic, (hereafter called ‘amber traffic light’) and acetylcholine, freeze, depressed, (‘red traffic light’). All that the GP can do is to utter a few words of advice, which most patients cannot receive or act on. iii) Preventing, healing and curing mental illness can only be accomplished by the patient taking responsibility for changing their attitudes and lifestyle to live more time in the parasympathetic induced endorphin-based calm relaxation, (‘green traffic light’, ‘sheep may safely graze’) when they feel good, and healing can begin. iv) The only practical solution which the NHS can do is to teach patients to be more meditative.
Doctors and nurses are not good advocates, as they are too stressed, and need to go on these courses themselves. The Boorman target (2009) of reducing the NHS staff sickness rate by 1% from 5% has not been met, and needs to be addressed by releasing staff to go on these courses. v) Talking therapies (such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, CBT) give patients good advice, but only about 10% of patients can receive this. The remaining 90% cannot hear it, making CBT a ‘ revolving door’ at taxpayers’ expense. Despite the appointment of 10,000 more CBT therapists, waiting times for CBT are typically a year in Sussex.
d) Recommendation 1 Education, education, education. This paper calls for (and proposes) a patient-centred (and taxpayer-centred) mental health service worthy of the name.
This should offer the 6 million depressed patients in England a menu of therapeutic training
courses which should be mass-commissioned and mass-provided from the third sector to meet the inherent demand within a maximum waiting time of 18 weeks.
e) Menu of courses. The core-curriculum of these therapeutic courses should be the
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course, as it is recommended by the National
Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) It earned this status (CG23, Dec 04, and CG123, May
2011) from trials (Teasdale et al, 2000, and 2004) that showed that it halves the 5 year relapse rate for depression. It thus has the gold-star evidence base. It combines teaching CBT together with meditation. It is of 2 hours per week for 8 weeks, and is much more cost-effective than CBT as one facilitator can train 20 patients, who also get peer support from the group.
f) A varied menu of other courses of similar length (8 weeks) should also be offered, which patients should be able to pick as it suits them, which together make their mental care pathway, including the following. The Expert Patient Programme. Singing for pleasure. The Emotion Based
Cognitive Therapy course. Family Constellations.
g) Recommendation 2 Spend up to 25% of the mental health budget on education
‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,’ so 25% (£12 mpa in Brighton and Hove) of the mental health budget (£55 mpa) should be spent on these courses to prevent, heal and cure mental sickness. This should be taken out of the drug budget, which has the added benefit of
7

removing the harm that drugs are doing. The market should be opened up to third sector companies to bid for contracts to provide these courses.
h) Recommendation 3 Incorporate this policy into the Age Friendly Cities project, sponsored by the World Health Organisation. This is supported by Brighton and Hove City Council
(Annie Alexander) and Crawley Council (W. Sussex County Council commissioner Malcolm Bray) who are promoting a ‘dementia friendly city’ initiative.
i) Recommendation 4. Commission SECTCo to run trial MBCT courses for Brighton
Integrated Care Service Wellbeing programme, and for the Council (biggest employer in the city, with 12,000 staff) under their occupational health scheme, to reduce staff sickness rates.
(Transport For London has reduced their staff sickness rate by 73% by offering the MBCT course to sick staff) (SECTCo) ( www.sectco.org
bid to do this on 23.7.12, see appendix 2) j) Outcome – halving the public health statistics by 2020
The desired outcome of this policy is healing, which is changing the attitude of patients from being a victim, to being a beneficiary. Implementing these recommendations in full from 2014 could halve the public health statistics by 2020, (see appendix 4) and double the health of the population, at 20% less total cost to the taxpayer.
3 Why am I writing this paper?
I have been a patient representative since 2000, and want to share my case history, as I think that it is typical of the 1 in 3 of us in England, totalling 17 million, who suffer from long term conditions.
My physical health broke down 20 years ago, in 1992, when I was 55. I fell and suffered compression fractures of my lumbar vertebrae, and was diagnosed with osteoporosis, and ankolosing spondylitis (poker back). This added to my obsessions.
In 2000, when I was 64, I lost my wife to cancer after 37 years of marriage. This was devastating to my mental health, as I was very dependent on her. I had psycho therapy with 3 therapists for 2 years. I had about 5 physical breakdowns with arthritis, each lasting up to 6 months, and had a hip replacement in 2004.
I am now 77, (the average life expectancy for men) and believe that I would now be demented or dead if I had not met the lady who I asked to be my second wife, whose answer was: ‘You are not in a fit state to marry anybody. Have you tried meditation?’ I said: ‘no, but I will try it if you will support me.’
She introduced me to active (music and movement) 1 hour meditations (such as dynamic and kundalini) I led these 3 times per week, and also went on many residential meditation courses and groups. I took the MBCT course in Brighton in
2008, paying £185 for it. This taught me vipassana (watching my breath) which has transformed my mental and physical health, improved my memory, and sharpened my mind. I now feel better than I did at 55.
8

I believe that meditation practice has cured my long term conditions. So that others can benefit from my experience, I lead meditation groups, and campaign for its free provision on the NHS. I did the MBCT teacher training in 2009, and created the Social Enterprise Complementary Therapy
Company, (SECTCo) in 2010 to provide this course (see www.sectco.org
). I have run 6 courses to date for over 50 people, who have given positive testimonials.
I conducted a before/after research trial over 3 courses in 2012, by issuing participants with a questionnaire. This has been completed by 22 participants, who showed an average 20% improvement overall in positivity, and a 30% improvement in the best half (11) of the sample.
This shows that SECTCo can obtain the good outcomes that other facilitators have also got with this course. (see paragraph 35 for more details)
My mother was a psychiatrist, my sister is a psychiatrist, my daughter is a clinical psychologist, and some of my cousins are doctors. However, I am an engineer, who is trained in problem solving, and worked as a consulting engineer economist, as was my father and grandfather.
4 Context - the prevalence of mental illness and dementia
On 1.4.13, the NHS will become clinically led by GPs in the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) who will then take over responsibility for commissioning most treatments in the NHS They will have a budget of about £80 bn pa, of which mental health makes up about 15%, or £12 bn pa.
The government’s intention under the Health and Social Care Act (Mar 2012) is to improve patient care by making the NHS patient-centred, rather than provider-centred, as it has been hitherto.
The reason that citizens use the NHS is to prevent, heal and cure their symptoms of disease. The word ‘prevent’ did not appear in the NHS vocabulary until the Darzi report introduced it in 2008, since when only lip-service has been paid to it. The words: ‘heal’ and ‘cure’ are 4 letter words which are taboo, as the NHS has never concerned itself with them.
Under the medical model of materialism, reductionism and mechanism, people are seen by doctors as machine, for which the words ‘heal’ and ‘cure’ are meaningless. To heal and cure, we have to remove the cause, and the cause of symptoms has hitherto been beyond the remit of the conventional medical profession. This illustrates how extremely provider-centred the NHS is, and the enormous gulf that there is between doctors and patients. I have written many papers on this subject, which are on my website www.reginaldkapp.org
.
This disconnect is particularly acute in mental health. Last June the London School of Economics
(LSE) published a report called: ‘How mental illness loses out in the NHS’. It was written by a panel under Lord Layard, and said that the NHS was failing to treat 3/4 million mentally ill patients in England. This has pushed mental health and dementia to the top of the agenda of the
Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt MP, and the NHS. The public health statistics in England are: a) 1 in 4 adults will experience mental illness (breakdown) at some time in their lives. b) 1 in 8 adults (6 million) are depressed, which is expected to double in 30 years. c) 1 in 60 adults (750,000) have dementia, which is expected to double in 30 years. d) In the city of Brighton and Hove there are 30,000 depressed patients. (according to the
Community Mental Health Prospectus, May 2012) of whom 4,000 are not beining treated at all
(pro-rata the LSE report)
5 What is the cause of mental illness and dementia?
The impression given in government reports and public health statistics is that mental illness is normal, natural and inevitable, ‘just one of those things which we can do nothing about, like
9

ageing and death’. This attitude stigmatises people with mental health conditions, writing them off, and consigning them to a scrap heap, (as the Victorians and Hitler did)
This is a mistaken view. Mental illness and dementia (madness) are not normal, natural or inevitable in any living creatures, including humans. The reason for this mistaken view is the paradigm known as the conventional medical mechanistic model, originating with Decartes, 3 centuries ago, which takes no account of mind or spirit, which makes mental health the
Cinderella service in the NHS.
Animals in their natural environment never go mad, get mentally sick, become homosexual or perverted. However, if they are kept in captivity for long periods, such as the farrowing sow in figure 1, they can be driven to those long term conditions. The cause of these conditions in humans is also confinement for long periods in un-natural, single-sex
FIGURE 1 S0W DRIVEN MAD BY
CAPTIVITY communities, such as in monasteries, convents, on ships, barracks, plantations, etc.
The fact that most of us in the free world have not been confined like that in our present lives is irrelevant, as we inherit our human conditioning (programming) from our ancestors. These tendencies could have come from our biological ancestors, (parents, grand parents, etc) and/or our spiritual ancestors, (our past lives) and/or from our collective unconscious (culture), as described by Carl Jung.
Decartes was right that we behave like machines, but health and sickness can not be defined in his mechanistic medical model, which has no place for mind. This paper therefore updates this to the computer system model, recognising that people behave like bio-computers, programmed with software created from our conditioning.
The natural state of all living creatures is bliss, as the pictures of those who are roaming free shows, as in figure
2 Sow blessed out in a meadow, and figure 3, Pet and child blissed out.
To be truly healthy and whole, (holistic) we need to feel this blissful state for most of the time. This is why we keep pets. Our mental and physical state of health is not just a physical phenomenon, as the Decartian medical.
FIGURE 2 SOW BLISSED
OUT IN A MEADOW model would have us believe. It is also a psychological one, which the Decartian view has never understood or
10

acknowledged, because it is in denial of anything non-physical, including mind.
FIGURE 3 PET AND CHILD BLISSED OUT
This narrow view was shown to be out-dated by Pavlov, who demonstrated the mind body connection a century ago. Yet it still persists today, as the LSE report (and the Francis report) identifies. To effectively treat mental illness, we have to understand and address the cause, so have to expand the medical model to the computer system.
6 The model of the person as a computer system
In this:
 Our body is our hardware which contains cellular memory.
 Our mind (ego, left brain etc) is our software, with which we have been programmed by our conditioning.
 Our self (higher self, soul, right brain, consciousness, awareness etc) is our operator.
 Spirit (life force, chi, prana, etc) is the internet and environment in which we live, in interdependent relationship with people, (such as our family, tribe, team, community, town, county, country, humanity) and things we need (such as food, water, fuel, love, planet, solar system, universe) This is shown diagrammatically in figure 4:
FIGURE 4 COMPUTER SYSTEM MODEL FOR PEOPLE
The behaviour of our computers is determined by the software with which they were programmed. So it is with human behaviour, which is largely determined by the software with which we were programmed by our conditioning, whose primary purpose is the survival of our species.
Anthropology shows that our software is billions of years old, and is a mixture of the primordial, ancient, old and the new in this life. Evidence for this is our fascination with films like ‘Jaws’
11

FIGURE 5 YIN YANG CHINESE SYMBOL which suggests that we unconsciously remember when we lived in the sea, some 500 million years ago. We have a reptilian stem in our brain, which is hundreds of millions of years old. That was overlaid by a mammalian brain, developed about 65 million years ago. Our neocortex exploded some 200,000 years ago, which was designed for us as hunter gatherer cave men, known as homo sapiens (thinking man).
The software of us ‘westerners’ also includes Christian conditioning created over the last 2 thousand years, which we call ‘nature’. This is different to Indian, Chinese, and ‘native’ cultural nature software, as figure 5, yin yang, Chinese symbol for the life force.
Our individual software was (and is) shaped by our present life’s environment, which is called:
‘nurture’. Nurture is our attitudes, which we learnt from our conditioning in this life, including parenting, education, home, job, friends, culture, religion, etc, or lack of those things.
We humans lack natural defences, (such as claws) so are the most vulnerable species, particularly as children. We therefore have to live by our wits, so are hypersensitive to fear. The automatic reaction is either fight/flight (go manic) or freeze (be depressed) On sensing danger, our sympathetic nervous system triggers glands to secret hormones, which determine our state of consciousness. These have to be understood, as when out of balance they can cause mental illness.
7 The traffic light analogy for states of consciousness
Prof Stephen Porges (University of Illinois) has created a traffic light analogy for the way that the states of consciousness are determined by hormones, as shown diagrammatically in figure 6. (source: ‘The
Relational Heart’ conference in London on 25.7.08,
RED
FREEZE
YELLO
W
FIGHT
FLIGHT
(described further in paper 9.30 of www.reginaldkapp.org)
FIGURE 6 HORMONAL RESPONSES TO DANGER.
THE TRAFFIC LIGHT STATES OF ALERTNESS
The red alert state is the freeze, acetylcholine reaction of preparation for being killed and eaten. This may be released in the traumatised state of acute anxiety, and
GREEN
SHEEP
MAY
SAFELY
GRAZE chronic depression. We may be paralysed by it, with little energy to do anything, such as ME, Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome.
The amber alert is the flight or fight adrenaline reaction.
This may give us enormous strength to make supreme effort to ‘move mountains’. This is the manic state of gabbling inappropriately. Manic depressives (bipolar) may
WHITE
MEDIT-
-ATION
12

alternate rapidly (in seconds) between the amber and the red state.
The green state is the above-mentioned, normal, natural, watchful relaxation (blissed out) state of animals, baby human beings, and enlightened masters. The parasympathetic nervous system releases endorphins, which make us feel good.
As the green meditative state is normal for animals, but not normal for human adults, I have added an extra white traffic light as the ‘altered state of consciousness’, (ASC) of the meditative state in which healing and curing is possible.
8 The hormonal responses to danger.
The corresponding hormones and brain wave frequencies are shown in table 1.
TABLE 1 HORMONAL RESPONSES TO DANGER
Traffic light colour
Alert
Red 9/11 (traumatised)
Yellow Danger (flight/fight)
Green Sheep may safely graze
White Altered state of consciousness (ASC)
Hormone Brain wave frequency
Hz
Frontal lobes of new brain
Acetylcholine 60 or more disengaged
Adrenaline/cortisol 40 or more disengaged
None
Endorphins, such as oxytocin
20 (beta)
10 (alpha)
5 (theta) engaged engaged
When we perceive a threat of danger, our traffic lights set to yellow within 30 milliseconds because we have to act automatically and don’t have time to think. (‘Shoot first, and ask questions afterwards’). The adrenaline flight/fight responses create fast, shallow breathing. We are then entirely controlled instinctively, on autopilot by our 200 million year old reptilian brain.
Our frontal lobes are disengaged as if we have had a temporary lobotomy, so we cannot think rationally. We will probably not be aware of what we are doing, or have any memory of it afterwards. This is why accounts of people involved in accidents have different recollections of the events. We feel anxious, and cannot concentrate.
When the danger is passed, it takes at least 10 minutes to disperse the adrenaline and calm down, get back in the green, and our frontal lobes can reconnect. Only then can we think rationally again, see what is in front of our eyes, hear what others are saying, and make appropriate responses.
Before that can happen the adrenaline has to be dispersed by vigorous exercise, (such as sprinting or shaking) so that endorphins can take its place. Tears contain adrenaline, so it is helpful to cry. However, vigorous exercise and crying is not socially acceptable, so the adrenaline is often not dispersed, but stored as suppressed emotions in our cells as cellular memories.
9 Sickness is caused by the yellow and red traffic lights.
Like animals, we could not live without adrenaline, because it activates us to get out of danger.
We naturally need ‘adrenaline rushes’ which is why we play and watch sport and the performing arts. Like other animals, we are designed to go through changes of these traffic lights many times each day, but to stay mentally healthy we need to spend most of our time in the green.
These physiological reactions were designed for us as cave men and women, to prepare us for life or death trauma, when mortal danger lurked everywhere. Adrenaline enables us to make
13

super-human efforts (James Bond style) to survive life threatening dangers. Examples are films about war, and ‘Touching the void’, which is a true story of a mountaineer with a shattered leg, who crawls for days to reach safety before his friend departs.
We were designed for these adrenaline reactions to be a rare events, (lasting say a few hours per day) with most of the rest of the time in recovery. However, the traumas which now trigger yellow or red alert are not life-threatening, but are such things as parking fines, tax demands, frowns from a boss or partner, watching the news, phone calls or texts telling about horrendous experiences in not finding a parking space
.
This is getting worse because we now have so many devices by which to stimulate the adrenaline reaction, and they are now mobile, so we can be alerted by them at any time of day or night,
24/7. Loudspeaker announcements prepare us for bombs. If we live like this continuously for only
6 weeks, that lifestyle gets hard wired into our brains. It becomes a permanent habit, which is hard to break. Some people now seem to have become addicted to their mobiles.
To discharge the adrenaline we should do vigorous exercise, such as go for a run, or to the gym, as an increasing number of us are doing. Marathons and half marathons, fun runs etc are becoming commonplace, which is greatly to be welcomed, as it is potentially part of the healing process against couch potatos. However, for most of us, most of the time, this activity is not possible, so the adrenaline is not discharged. The emotional charge remains in our cells as
‘emotional garbage’ with which we become constipated.
The symptoms of this condition are that we feel ourselves as victims. (We are, but we are unwitting prisoners of our own mind and lifestyle). This is the cause of high blood pressure and heart disease, which is the biggest killer. We cannot function properly, but we do not know why.
We feel that we are in a pit, but the more we try to climb out, the deeper it gets. We may be tired all the time (TATT) No wonder we are anxious and depressed, as we do not know what has hit us.
Furthermore, to be able to perform these super-human efforts, the adrenaline reaction empties our bowels to lighten our load, and turns off our digestive juices, so that we cannot digest our food properly. This is the cause of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is suffered by 2 million. It also diminishes our immune system, so that we cannot fight infections. This is the cause of diabetes, cancer, etc.
The science of epigenetics has discovered how this happens. We have ‘mirror neurones’ which mirror what we see, and makes our nervous system react as if we were there. When we watch the news on television, we secrete the same hormones as if we are actually in Afghanistan being shot at. When we travel by train and hear: ‘Do not leave luggage unattended…’ our nervous system prepares us for a bomb going off.
When we go to the doctor and get a diagnosis, or even just have the tests to rule it out, it can provoke a vicious spiral, more anxiety, more adrenaline, more anxiety….. The worse we get, the worse we get. This describes the present state of a third of the population (17 million) of England with long term conditions. Assuming that they were the recipients in 2011 of the 936 million monthly prescriptions for drugs, each one of those 17 million people are continuously on an average of 5 prescription drugs.
These may relieve symptoms in the short term, but make things worse in the long term. This is because they pretend to fix our problem, so we don’t take the action we need to get better. They also have side effects which add to our symptoms. They are like plastering over a warning light
14

on our dashboard telling us that something is wrong with our engine, so that we remain in blissful ignorance until our body crashes. Far from healing and curing our mental sickness, these drugs are doing more harm than good, and are making us worse.
10 Drug treatments for mental illness are counterproductive
a) Drug treatments do not even claim to prevent, heal or cure mental illness, but only to alleviate our symptoms by suppressing or knocking out the bad feelings that we have about ourselves, such as low self esteem, etc. They may be useful in the short term as ‘chemical coshes’, but do more harm than good if taken for long periods, which is not recommended, but often happens, because GPs have no drug-free alternatives that they can prescribe.
Drugs have harmful side effects on the mindbody, and are addictive. They can make mental illness worse, or even cause it. There is a book (which I have not read) called: ‘Drug induced dementia’, which title implies that drugs can cause dementia. The government report by Dr Sube
Banerjee (Oct 2009) called ‘The use of antipsychotic medication for people with dementia’ showed that anti-psychotic drugs actually kill 1,800 patients pa.
A participant of one of my courses who had a psychotic breakdown told me that the first time she took an anti-psychotic drug it felt like: ‘a bullet through my head.’ A study of many thousands of old people on drugs for years found that they were much more cognitively impaired, and died years earlier than the control group who were not on drugs. The evidence base for the safety and effectiveness of drugs is unravelling fast, as the following references show.
b) Bryan Hubbard, publisher of What Doctors Don’t Tell You (WDDTY) wrote in Dec 2012:
‘Around a third of people taking prescription drugs don’t need to – they are victims of over diagnosis, where medicine changes the definitions of illness or sees disease that isn’t there. It’s good for the drug companies. Nearly two-thirds of people taking a prescription drug will come off worse from the experience. They will either suffer an ‘adverse drug reaction’ – which could be any reaction from insomnia to death – get ‘intoxicated’ from an overdose or become dependent on the drug.’
c) Deutches Arzteblatt International, 2012; 109: 69075 wrote:.
‘If you have any elderly relatives, take a look in their medicine cabinet some time – there’s a good chance they have been prescribed a drug they shouldn’t be taking, and which may be causing all sorts of health problems.
Many drugs are considered off-limits to elderly patients, and independent bodies have even prepared lists of them, often called PIMs, or potentially inappropriate medications.
Doctors seem to be blissfully unaware of these lists, and hand out prescriptions all day long to the elderly. Worse, they hand out multiple prescriptions so that their older patients are taking a cocktail of PIM drugs.
German researchers reckon that 25 per cent of elderly patients are taking at least one PIM drug, and 8 per cent are taking a cocktail of four or more PIM drugs every day.
The most common PIM drugs being prescribed include amitriptyline, an antidepressant, acetyldigoxin, a heart drug, and the anti-anxiety drugs tetrazepam and oxazepam.’
d) Reuters on 9.2.12 –‘ Millions of healthy people - including shy or defiant children, grieving relatives and people with fetishes - may be wrongly labelled mentally ill by a new international diagnostic manual, (DSM) specialists said.’
15

e) Open letter on safety of medicines to UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Health
Secretary Andrew Lansley, from Kathy Archibald, Robert Coleman, Christopher Foster, on behalf of 19 other signatories to the Times wrote:
‘We are writing to you as a group of clinicians and scientists to express our concern about the escalating problems of drug failures and adverse drug reactions. The UK pharmaceutical industry is in crisis, as the departure of Pfizer from the Sandwich site makes plain. Likewise, health care is in a web of crises, many of which are intimately linked to the pharmaceutical industry's major problems. Adverse drug reactions have reached epidemic proportions and are increasing at twice the rate of prescriptions.
1 The European Commission estimated in 2008 that adverse reactions kill 197 000 EU citizens annually, at a cost of €79 billion.
28.11.11 http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60802-7/fulltext/
f) A million patients were hospitalised in England in 2011 by adverse drug reactions (from a news report in 2012)
g) Book ‘Bad Pharma’ by psychiatrist Dr Ben Goldacre, published in Oct 2012, describes drugs as a ‘murderous disaster’ because of the massaging of trial data by drug companies, and the failure of government regulation.
h) Street drugs are dangerous Everyone knows this, and we teach this to our children.
However, prescription drugs are no less dangerous because they are prescribed by doctors. They are actually more dangerous, because we trust doctors to advise us how to prevent, heal and cure our symptoms. That trust has been betrayed by the drug companies and government regulatory agencies.
i) The NHS is a self-fulfilling business
This provider-centred system pays the salaries of the 1.8 million who work for the NHS, and the millions more who work for their suppliers, such as the drug companies. However, it is not so good for the 17 million patients with long term conditions, and the taxpayers (all of us) who pay for it. Statistics tell us that the 30,000 GPs in England have 300 million patient contacts pa. This is 10,000 pa per average GP, which is 40 per working day. One in three of us patients present with anxiety or depression, so GPs have 100 million patient contacts with patients with mental sickness. At present, all that they can give us is antidepressants, which they know don’t work, and are counter-productive, and are making us worse.
j) A patient cured is a customer lost The NHS system has been self-fulfilling for the last 65 years, as it keeps patients coming back. This is why the words ‘heal’ and ‘cure’ are 4 letter words
(taboo) Hillaire Belloc wrote long before the NHS: ‘Saying as they take their fees, there is no cure for this disease’. The more a nation spends on public health, the worse health gets. The sickest nation is USA, where they spend 15% of GDP. In UK, we doubled the NHS budget over the last decade from 5-9% of GDP, and public health statistics show that we are now sicker than a decade ago. This is because we have allowed our lifestyles to become too stressful through over stimulating our minds, and taking drugs (recreational and prescription) to help us to cope.
There must be a better way of spending public money than poisoning a third of the population.
11 Talking therapies
The UK government has long recognised the problem of prescription drugs, but there is no easy solution, as a third of the population are addicted to them. In May 2006, Health Secretary,
Patricia Hewitt initiated Lord Layard’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. This was heralded in the press as ‘the end of the Prozac nation’.
16

This was successful in appointing 10,000 more CBT therapists, which has brought the waiting time down from over 2 years, to about 1 year in Sussex, (except for emergency cases) but this is still far too long to call it a mental health ‘service’. Far from ending the ‘Prozac nation,’ and despite headlines in the press (in 2009): ‘Prozac doesn’t work’, the prescribing rate for antidepressants has continued to rise, (by 11% in 2011 alone). Like Prozac, IAPT isn’t working either.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is NICE-recommended, and is the talking therapy of choice in the NHS. It is usually done one to one, as therapist to patient, and it can be effective in healing and curing mental illness. However, it has a limited success rate, which I have seen reported in the national press as only 10%. It is therefore slow and uncertain in outcome, expensive for the taxpayer, with questionable value for money
IAPT can be made to work, and CBT can be made more cost-effective by combining it with meditation, as is done in the Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course. This course should be the main plank of the solution to the problem of preventing, healing and curing mental illness. This is because:
 One facilitator can teach a class of up to 20 patients.
 The facilitator does not need to be clinically qualified.
 Patients get the added benefit of peer support from the group, which is emphasised by
NICE.
 Faulty software in our mind cannot be corrected with the faulty software in our mind, (as
CBT alone tries to do) We need to go beyond the mind, in the ASC of meditation (the white traffic light) to ‘download’ better software with a change of attitude, as we shall describe later.
12 What can we do to improve our mental health?
When we understand that artificial stress is the cause, the remedy is obvious. Become aware of which traffic light state we are in, and if it is amber or red, (manic or depressive) change our lifestyle to give ourselves more time in the green recovery state. Slow down, and calm down by avoiding sensational TV, especially when eating and digesting our food. Avoid fast food and stressful relationships. Avoid making dramas out of so-called crises, or letting others tell you endlessly about theirs. Include in our daily lifestyle stress-busters, such as exercise, walks in nature, slow food, nourishing relationships.
Turn negative thoughts (bad news) round so that they are positive (good news). For example, we can turn round the above mentioned statistics to view them positively as good news: a) 3 out of 4 people in England will never suffer a mental breakdown in their entire life. b) 7 out of 8 people in England are not depressed today. c) 49 million of us out of 50 million will die with mental capacity (‘compos mentis’) d) Long term conditions are not necessarily permanent. They can be prevented, healed and cured by drug-free meditation techniques (the white traffic light) which can be taught and learned (such as the MBCT course) We can change the vicious spiral into a virtuous one, the better it gets, the better it gets. If we persevere, we can rewire our brains to do this habitually, curing all our symptoms.
The MBCT course and other meditation techniques can (and should) be taught to the 6 million depressed people who need them, by mass-commissioning them, and opening up the market to the third sector to mass-provide them.
17

13 Solution – Prevent, heal and cure mental illness by learning mindfulness meditation in a MBCT course
Mindfulness meditation was the source of enlightenment for Buddha, 2,500 years ago. It is known in Sanscrit as ‘vipassana’ translated as ‘watching the breath’. It has been practiced by
Buddhists ever since, and is the basis of popular 10 day vipassana retreats available in many places. It was first introduced as a therapy in public healthcare in 1979 by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn. He called it: ‘the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course’ which he taught in a hospital in
Massachusetts USA, ( www.umassmed.edu
) It is 16 hours of tuition, usually given as 2 hours per week for 8 weeks.
In 1995 the MBSR course was introduced into the NHS by Dr Mark Williams of Bangor University
( www.bangor.ac.uk
) who rebranded it the MBCT course, because it incorporates the essence of
CBT. He has since moved to the Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre, ( www.octc.co.uk
) . Trials of the course (Teasdale et all 2000 and Teasdale 2004) on patients who had had 3 previous bouts of depression showed that it halved their 5 year relapse rate. It was therefore awarded NICErecommendation in Dec 2004 under CG23, and later under CG123 (May 2011).
It has also been found successful in treating patients with other conditions, including drug and alcohol addicts. ( www.breathworks.co.uk
) It is made available in the public sector, such as in
Transport for London, with 20,000 staff, where it reduced the staff sickness rate by 73%.
( Alison.dunn@tube.tfl.gov.uk
). It has been also been used with good effect in schools
( www.mindfulnessinschools.co.uk
)
Many popular books have been written about mindfulness meditation, (see bibliography at the end), and courses are frequently run as evening classes, costing between £100-200 per participant. The Priory provides it for £370 in Hove.
14 What is meditation and mindfulness?
Meditation is an altered state of consciousness (ASC) in which the brain wave frequency, which is normally about 20 Hz (beta waves) or more when aroused, slows down to about 10Hz or less
(alpha waves) This alpha state is only possible when the mindbody (psychosoma) is deeply relaxed, as in non dreaming sleep, or in deep meditation when waking.(white traffic light)
Mindfulness is just one of 112 ways of getting into the ASC of meditation
(according to the book of Shiva). It is watching what is going on inside and outside ourselves in the present moment
(the here and now) without judgement.
This is what the dog is doing in the cartoon, figure 7 ‘ Mind full or mindful?’
FIGURE 7 MIND FULL OF MINDFUL?
18

However, the man can’t appreciate the sun and the trees because he is distracted by his negative thoughts (known as ‘ruminating’) This spoils his enjoyment of the moment. If he does it frequently for years, the habit gets hard wired into his brain, and make him progressively more mentally ill, with neurosis, pyschosis, and dementia.
15 The bad news - neural pathways (hard wiring) determine our behaviour.
Animals in the wild, babies, small children and enlightened masters (such as Buddha) are mindful all the time, but people lose this ability as our minds and egos develop from the age of 2. We became a new species about 200,000 years ago called: ‘homo sapiens’ (thinking man), when our neocortex (the frontal lobes) of our brain ‘exploded’ into a bio-computer. This gave us the ability to think, which no animal can do comparably well.
Our hyperactive mind has given us the blessing of technology to create an easier lifestyle for ourselves, but also the curse of thinking negative thoughts (ruminating) Our minds makes us easily hypnotised and brainwashed into religious dogma, consumerism, and addictions. The cliché: ‘it’s all in the mind’ is true, as it is our mind which is the source of mental illness and madness.
Neuro physiology research shows that our ability to think comes from the neural network in our brain. We have billions of neurons, each of which has thousands of synapses connecting to other neurons. When we make the effort to think a new thought, synapses fire together as sparks across gaps. This is why learning is difficult, particularly for ‘old dogs to learn new tricks’.
We learn by focussing, concentrating, and thinking the same thoughts over and over again. Then
‘neurons that fire together, wire together.’ Our brains gradually become hard wired to repeat that same action automatically, habitually, second nature, without having to think. The science of this is summarised in the film ‘What the bleep do we know?’ (2004)
For example, learning a language, riding a bicycle or driving a car, is difficult at first, but becomes easy with practice. Once a skill is learned, it becomes automatic. Our habits and attitudes are similarly hard wired into the circuits of our brain. We then live on ‘autopilot’, without having to make the effort thinking them out or through. What we practice doing and thinking most of the time creates our reality, by gradually wiring our brain that way.
If we practice skills, habits and attitudes which are positive, functional, useful and lawful, then our behaviour will be positive, functional, useful and lawful. However, if we practice skills, habits and attitudes which are negative, disfunctional, harmful and criminal, then our behaviour will be negative, dis-functional harmful and criminal. This is the basis of the Biblical quotation: ‘ye shall reap as ye shall sow.’
The bad new is that dis-functional habits can manifest as obsessions, addictions, perversions, and long term conditions, such as cancer, MS, and CFS/ME, etc. It makes no difference whether we wanted these or not, and we may well hate ourselves for having them. (which makes them worse)
19

We cannot get rid of these habits and symptoms (as we want to) because they are hard wired into the circuits of our brain. They are not separate from us; they are us. So is the negative belief that we have no free will to change them. It is no good wishing them away, as this makes them stronger. Doctors often blame virus as the cause of long term conditions, and then tell us that there is no cure for viruses. If we have a long term condition, we behave like computers who have a virus, meaning that they have been programmed with disfunctional software. However, we can change disfunctional computer software by downloading an upgrade.
16 The good new – neural pathways can be changed by neuro-plasticity (soft wiring)
The good news is that these circuits are not ‘hard’ wired, but ‘soft’ wired into our brain. The reality of the existence of free will has been hotly debated for millennia, but the scientific proof of it is called ‘neuro plasticity’ in the science of epigenetics, and mirror neurons.
Neurons only live about 6 weeks (40 days) and when they die, the circuit is broken. New neurons are born, and the circuits are reconnected. This means that we are not really stuck with a hardwired disfunctional brain permanently, for the rest of our lives. The literature is full of stories of people who have had spontaneous remissions, etc, giving the lie to the belief that long term conditions have to be long.
This 40 day effect has been known for millennia as ‘quarentine’, derived from the latin for 40.
This was the 40 days that Jesus fasted in the wilderness, (lent) and the 40 days that Christian pilgrims and crusaders had to serve God and the pope to earn their soul’s place in heaven. The authorities knew by experience that if we do something continuously for 40 days, we are permanently changed, and can never be the same again.
The scientific explanation is that every second, thousands of neurons are dying and are being reborn. (There are billions of neurons in our brain, and 3.6 million seconds in 40 days). If we continuously have the same attitude, we continuously think the same thoughts. Our brains rewire the same way, so we behave in the same way without changing. This is why religious and political beliefs tend to be permanent.
However, if we have a revelation (an aha moment of healing) our attitude changes, so that we have the possibility of thinking in the new way. We then have two choices:
 Either to continue thinking in the old way, when our brain will rewire in the old way, and our behaviour will stay the same.
 Or to change to thinking in the new way. If we do this continuously for 6 weeks, our brain will have completely rewired in the new way by the end of that period. Our behaviour will be permanently changed, and we will be cured.
This is what happens when we have a spontaneous remission from a long term condition. The body has self-healing powers which work quickly once we have removed the blockages created by negative attitudes and thoughts in our mind. A well publicised example of this is given in
Brandon Bays book: ‘The Journey’, summarised below.
Brandon had a tumour the size of a basket ball in her uterus, which a surgeon recommended be excised without delay. She pleaded to be given a month to try alternatives, and while having a massage she had a revelation that her tumour was connected with her younger sister, who drowned aged 2 when Brandon was 4. At that ‘aha’ moment she felt a shift in the tumour.
Thereafter, she focussed on the incident in what she called a ‘campfire’ meeting, in which she visualised the family discussing every aspect of the traumatic incident. When she went back to the surgeon 6 weeks later, the tests showed no sign of any tumour.
20

A reference is given below to an article showing how genes are turned on and off by our attitude to our environment, so we can heal and cure our dis-eases by changing our attitude with meditation. http://healthfreedoms.org/2011/10/16/epigenetic-clue-to-schizophrenia-bipolardisorder/ 17.10.11
17 How can we rewire our brains?
The way to rewire our brain so that our behaviour is more functional, is to focus positively on the desired outcome, as Brandon did. This is what we do in meditation practice, but it is not a quick fix. For example, new year resolutions, and positive thinking for a few minutes occasionally, don’t last long enough to have any permanent effect on our neurons. Contrived positive thinking (eg
‘I’m OK’) is usually outvoted by ruminating negative thoughts (‘I’m not OK’) in our unconscious minds. As shown above, to change our habitual behaviour permanently (cure) we need to practice thinking functionally for 40 days (1,440 hours) continuously.
This is why people go on retreats, as Jesus did for 40 days in the wilderness, but this is not practicable for most people. A good compromise is to practice meditation for one hour per day for 1,440 days, or 4 years. This will take 24 times as long, but will be just as effective in rewiring our brains (changing our software) The purpose of practicing meditation is:
First, to create conditions in which we can have a healing moment revelation which changes our attitude and belief from negative (disfunctional) to positive (functional).
Second, to maintain thinking the new belief for at least 6 weeks (1,440 hours) so that the new neurons rewire our brain to embody it, so it is permanent thereafter.
18 What is meditation?
Meditation is an altered state of consciousness (ASC) in which we (our soul, higher self, consciousness operator ) watches what is going on in our mindbody (psychosoma) see figure 8
The third eye watching the mindbody. We were continuously in this state as a baby up to the age of about 2, before our mind developed. Animals in the wild are in an ASC all the time, as they are not cursed with our hyper-active minds in an exploded neocortex.
We humans unconsciously remember this blissful state that we knew as babies, and long to heal and cure our hyper-active mind, which is causing us the misery of mental illness. The way that we cope with our hyperactive minds is with
distractions. For thousands of years, we have been instinctively distracting ourselves from ruminating intrusive negative thoughts with
activities. Any activity will do, but some
FIGURE 8 THE THIRD EYE WATCHING THE MINDBODY (PSYCHOSOMA) are better than others. To behave more functionally, heal and cure we need to distract ourselves with functional activities which are sustainable, namely meditation.
21

Functional distractions (as long as they are not taken to excess) include work, playing or watching sport, the arts, socialising, celebrating, religious rituals. Disfunctional distractions include excessive shopping, alcohol, gambling, making war, obsessions, addictions. As mentioned above, what we do most of the time becomes hard wired, so we tend to become addicted to it.
Examples are the workaholic, in which work controls us, rather than us controlling our work.
There are many methods of distracting ourselves with meditation. Monks and nuns have always practiced meditation or prayer for long periods in monasteries and convents. Music is the most common, which after it has stopped sometimes goes on in our mind for hours. Sport and the performing arts are a form of meditation. We can see many examples of people performing in a
ASC on television, such as Olympic athletes, and stars of the stage and film.
Meditation practices have increasingly percolated into the west for the last few decades, since the
Chinese invasion of Tibet displaced Buddhists. For example, the Beatles popularised transcendental meditation (TM) from India, where it had been practiced for at least 5,000 years.
The Hindu way of distracting the mind in meditation has been celebratory rituals of music, dancing, chanting, and repeating mantras. Some of these were shown on TV, such as the Rev.
Peter Owen Jones: ‘Around the world in 80 faiths.’ These celebratory techniques are collectively known in meditation circles as the ‘path of love’.
19 What is mindfulness (vipassana)?
About 2,500 years ago, the Buddha discovered a new and easier way of distracting the mind, which he called ‘vipassana,’ (literally translated as ‘watching the breath’, but now called
‘mindfulness’) This technique has the advantage of not needing other people or musical instruments. It has since been called the ‘ path of awareness’, to differentiate it from the ‘path of love.’ In this method, we distract ourselves by watching our breath as it comes in and out, making our belly rise and fall. This anchors us in the present moment (the ‘here and now’) instead of in our thoughts, which are always in the past or the future.
As with any other distraction, watching displaces ruminating, so that the neural pathways that previously maintained ruminating die and disappear, and are replaced with neural pathways that enable us to watch our breath all the time. This grounds us to live in our body, rather than in our mind. The more we practice watching our breath, the more we remember to do it, as the neural circuits rewire that way.
This practice is a virtuous spiral, which becoming second nature, so that eventually we can watch every breath, even in our sleep, on a split screen with whatever else on which we are concentrating. As the ruminating negative thoughts are eliminated, our mental and physical health improves, and we become cured of our long term conditions.
This is my personal experience. I have been practicing and leading meditation for over 10 years and it has gradually cured me of obsessively worrying where the next meal was coming from, compulsively giving to beggars, hypoglycaemia, (irritability from low blood sugar) cataract, osteoporosis, ankolosing spondylitis (poker back) and arthritis.
20 What is mindlessness?
Mindfulness is not easy to understand until we have experienced it, so it is easier to describe it’s opposite – mindlessness. I saw a bizarre example of this about a lady in the USA who bought a new residential vehicle. She drove it home on the freeway, put it on ‘cruise control’, and went and made herself a cup of coffee. It crashed, so she sued the company. She won a new vehicle
22

and compensation from the court, because the instruction book did not say: ‘cruise control only controls the speed. You still have to steer.’ The new books now say this.
This story illustrates how our minds work. Each time we learn a new skill, we add new wiring to our brain, so we can then do that function automatically, without thinking. It becomes like a new gadget on our car, or a new ap on our computer. All our lives we keep adding gadgets and aps to our brain, so we can do more and more living on autopilot. Eventually we can let our whole life run itself mindlessly that way. That becomes our lifestyle.
However, we are not aware that this has happened, because we were not watching when it did.
Failing to watch our bodies means that we do not see or hear the signals that tell us that something is wrong, like warning lights on our dashboard. This eventually leads to our health crashing as a long term condition, because we have stopped steering our lives.
Those close to us, (such as family, friends, doctors, nurses) can see clearly that the cause of our illness is our mindless lifestyle. They tell us to change, but we cannot get their message, as our brains are wired not to receive it. We therefore deny it, saying: ‘There Is No Alternative’ (TINA) because this belief has also been hard wired into our brain.
To heal and cure these negative beliefs, we have to regain control of our lifestyle by learning to meditate. Only when our third eye of consciousness (figure 8) is watching what is happening inside us, can we receive our body’s messages, and act on them. Then we are whole, healed, and healthy.
21 What is health and illness etc in the computer system model?
a) Health (functionality) is compatability (harmony) between our 4 component parts: body
( hardware) mind (software) soul (operator) spirit, environment (internet.).
b) Illness (dis-functionality) is incompatibility (disharmony) between the 4 above component parts. This occurs in the mind ( software, eg a disabling virus) as the body (hardware) can selfheal if the mind is not obstructing it. Drugging the body is like pouring acid on our cellular memories ( hard drive) which stops them from remembering and shouting: ‘stop’, but harms them, so is counter productive to our health and wellbeing.
c) Healing and curing is downloading more functional software, arising from a changed attitude, as a revelation. This can only happen in mediation, when we go beyond our mind, to watch our thoughts (as figure 5) We cannot change dis-functional computer software with disfunctional computer software, but have to import new software from outside our system.
Similarly, we cannot change disfunctional attitudes of our mind ( software) with the same disfunctional attitudes of our mind ( software) Einstein is reported to have said that we cannot change our thinking with the same thinking that created the problem. However, this is what talking therapy (counselling) is trying to do, and this explains why it usually does not work to heal or cure, and can be a never-ending revolving door.
d) Effective therapy is giving ourselves time and space with a meditative (ASC) therapist or facilitator, (with empathy and rapport) who is in an ASC themselves, so can get us into an ASC of meditation. Only then can we listen to, and hear what our body is telling us, and in which our attitude of mind can change, so that we can heal. We then have to focus on the new attitude for at least 6 weeks, so that our neural pathways can rewire, and effect a permanent cure.
22 Why can’t GPs prescribe MBCT courses for anxious and depressed patients?
23

We have seen above that the MBCT course is a is NICE recommended cost-effective treatment for mental illness, which is abundantly provided in the private sector to clients who can pay the going rate (£100-370) Under the NHS constitution, patients are entitled to all NICE-recommended treatments free on the NHS, if their doctor says that it is clinically appropriate.
One in three patients in primary care present with anxiety /depression, so according to NICE guidelines, GPs should consider the MBCT course for most if not all of these patients. As the average GP has 40 patient contacts per working day, the average GP should consider the MBCT course for 13 patients every day. Nationally this totals 100 million anxious/depressed patient contacts pa.
Unfortunately, the NICE guidelines are advisory, not mandatory. However, commissioners are supposed to consider them when planning services, and if they make the decision not to, they are supposed to publish the reasons why they do not fund these treatments. The Brighton and
Hove PCT has never done this, despite having been repeatedly asked to do so by me.
According to a recent study by Mind, 60% of GPs would prescribe alternative treatments for their patients if they could. A poll from the Mental Health Foundation (who have sponsored an online version of the MBCT course for £40, see www.bemindfulonline.com
) showed that about 1 in 2
GPs want their patients to do a mindfulness course, but the patient has to pay, which most cannot afford.
Unfortunately, GPs cannot prescribe this course (except in emergency) because the waiting time is too long (over 20 years in Sussex, as described below) This is because the Primary Care Trust
(PCT) have not commissioned and contracted for enough provision of it yet.
23 Present contract provision of the MBCT course
Although clinical psychologist Brenda Roberts introduced the MBCT course in 2004 to the sole provider of mental health services in Sussex (Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust, SPFT), until
2011 they only provided one part time MBCT course facilitator (Robert Marx) for the whole of
Sussex.
He was only contracted to provide 4 courses pa for up to 20 participants, totalling 80 patient places pa. As there are 160,000 depressed patients in Sussex (11% of the population of 1.5m) the theoretical waiting time was then 160,000/80=2,000 years. This meant that the average patient had to wait until 4012 for a course. As waiting times are supposed to be less than 18 weeks (1/3 rd of a year) the disconnect factor between supply and demand was 6,000.
I am a member of SPFT, and asked questions about this excessive waiting time at their 2010
AGM. Dr Kay MacDonald (clinical director) gave us the welcome news that the Board had just agreed the funding of a training programme for 18 more MBCT facilitators.
In 2011 Robert trained about 20 more facilitators. I rang him up last summer to ask what the waiting time now is. He told me angrily: ‘it is zero’. This is the politically correct answer, and demonstrates the ‘catch 22’ way that the PCT calculates waiting times from a supply based
(provider-centred) viewpoint.
GPs know that the waiting time for the MBCT course is excessively long, so hardly ever prescribe it. The commissioning managers at the PCT therefore see hardly any demand for the course, so commission very little. This is a self-perpetuating system which denies patients their statutory rights to cost effective treatments.
24

24 The disconnect between supply and demand for the MBCT course
The above figures show that there was a 6,000 times disconnect between commissioning managers (who never see any patients, so do not know which treatments work, and which do not) and GPs (who do know, as they have on average 40 patient contacts every working day,
10,000pa, totalling 300 mpa nationally). This disconnect is illustrated in Figure 9
FIGURE 9 THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN PROVIDER-CENTRED AND PATIENT-CENTRED
PERSPECTIVES ON THE SUPPLY AND DEMAND FOR THE MBCT COURSE
Provider-centred perception of demand: 80 patient places pa
Patient-centred perception of demand
Supply before
2011, 80 patient places pa
Waiting time
2,000 years
Proposed supply in 2014,
480,000 patient places pa
Waiting time 18 weeks
(1/3 year)
Real demand = 160,000 depressed patients, for all of whom the MBCT course is clinically indicated, so should be considered, and prescribed.
25 What is the present waiting time for the MBCT course?
At the time of writing, the SPFT is still the only NHS provider of the MBCT course in Sussex
(although this is changing). I have been told that they have 20 facilitators, but I do not know how many courses they are commissioned to provide. Assuming that they are commissioned and contracted to provide 20 courses pa each for 20 patients per course, the supply available for GPs to prescribe would be 20X20X20=8,000 patient places pa.
If every one of the 160,000 depressed patients in Sussex was prescribed one course pa, the waiting time would be 160,000/8,000=20 years. The average patient would be offered a course in 2033. Some patients might refuse the offer of a course, but others might need more than one course pa. The disconnect factor would have then reduced by a factor of 100, but is still 60.
In 2012, SPFT did a a partnership deal with the Brighton Integrated Care Service (BICS), to create the Brighton and Hove Wellbeing Service (BHWBS) This was commissioned and awarded a primary care contract last July to provide a Wellbeing Service from the GP surgeries in the city.
The clinical lead for the BHWBS (Helen Curr) told me that BHWBS have recently appointed 2
MBCT facilitators, who are starting their first course at the end of Jan 2013. This is welcome news, but 2 more facilitators is only 10% more than the existing 20, assuming that they are new ones, and not redeployed old ones. Even so, they are a drop in the ocean of unmet demand, which at best could only reduce the waiting time by 10% to 18 years, and the disconnect factor to 54.
25

On 1.4.13, (in 1 month’s time) the GPs will take over responsibility for 60% of the commissioning budget from the PCT managers. For Brighton and Hove city, this amounts to £400 mpa, which includes £55 mpa for mental health. I hope that the GPs will recalculate these waiting times in a patient-centred way, as shown on the right hand side of figure 9, and mass-commission and mass-provide this (and other) courses.
26 How can we reducing health inequalities?
The Marmot report (2010) found that the poor suffer long term conditions 18 years earlier, and die 9 years earlier than the rich. Reducing these health inequalities has all party support, and is therefore high on the Department of Health’s and CCG’s agenda. To reduce them, we need to know the cause, and remove it. I believe that the cause is that the rich (like me) can and do afford complementary therapy (such as the MBCT course) so obtain the health benefit. The poor cannot afford this, so go without.
This explanation also accounts for the statistical fact that doctors have the same long term condition and life expectancy rates as the poor, despite the fact that they are rich, so could afford complementary therapy. Their problem is that they were taught at medical school that complementary therapy is quackery practiced by charlatans. (As the evidence base for drugs unravels, this seems to apply to conventional mental health treatments)
This negative belief in doctors’ minds programmes them to choose not to take complementary therapy, so they go without, like the poor. Furthermore, the conventional medical model rejects the holistic paradigm (body, mind, spirit) denying doctors the healing power of meditation,
(which is the active ingredient in complementary therapy) so suffer the consequences.
The way to reduce health inequalities is to remove its cause, by providing NICE-recommended complementary therapy (such as the MBCT course) free at the point of use on GP prescription on demand, within a short waiting time. This requires mass-commissioning and mass-providing it by opening up the market to third sector providers, as was successfully done for hip replacements in
2008.
Similarly, the way to reduce the waiting time for the MBCT course is by opening up the market to third sector providers, including SECTCo. I have been lobbying the commissioners (Brighton and
Hove PCT/CCG) and the monopoly provider (Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust) for 4 years, and describe my findings below.
27 Opening up the mental health market to Any Qualified Provider
The Health and Social Care Act (March 2012) theoretically broke the NHS monopoly on who could provide treatments. Accordingly, last summer, the contract for the Community Mental Health
Support Programme for 2013/16 for was opened up to third sector providers by Brighton and
Hove City Council jointly with NHS commissioners.
The prospectus was about 100 pages, including supporting papers, and required the successful contractor to provide an adequate support system for the prevention, healing and curing of mental illness. However, the total budget was only £1.8mpa, which was 20% less than the previous year (£2.3 mpa) That total amount was split in previous years between 33 contracts, averaging £70,000 pa per contract. For commissioners to think that such a paltry sum is adequate to make any significant impact on the community mental health of the 300,000 people in the city is deluded.
26

SECTCo ‘s mission is to create a mental health service worthy of the name, so we put in a bid
(23.7.12 see (See appendix 2, and website www.sectco.org
section 6) to run 600 therapeutic courses pa (including 200 MBCT courses pa), for about £4 mpa in the first year, doubling in the second year and tripling in the third year.
This was a political statement, knowing full well that our bid would have to be rejected. However we told the commissioners that our offer continues to stand throughout 2013, in the hope that this contract could be funded out of the mental health budget of £55 mpa when the CCG takes over in April 2013.
We believe that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that these courses could and should be mass-commissioned and mass-provided to give patients self-help tools to prevent, heal and cure mental illness. This would give better value for public money, and could halve the public health statistics by 2020, at 20% less total cost to the taxpayer.
28 How can prevention, healing, and curing be promoted?
The problem for the NHS is that no-one can prevent, heal or cure mental illness in anyone else, or even in themselves. All that the NHS (and us in society) can do is to promote attitudes and lifestyles in which we can be healthy. I repeat the definitions stated in paragraph 6 above.
The conventional medical model cannot even define health, healing, or curing, except in the negative: ‘absence of disease’. This is because the conventional medical establishment only is stuck in the paradigm of materialism, reductionism, mechanism, which only accepts the reality of the physical (matter, particles, of the body) It does not accept the reality of the non-physical
(invisible waves) including mind and spirit. To include them, we have to expand the mechanistic medical model to the metaphor of the computer system because these are everyday practical examples. In it the hardware = body, software = mind (left brain), operator = soul, consciousness, (right brain),
and internet = environment.
We saw above that;
 health is compatability (harmony) between these 4 components,
 prevention is avoiding these components becoming incompatible,
 healing is restoring compatability temporarily,
 curing is restoring compatability permanently.
29 Is the concept of soul scientific?
The concept of soul exists in every world religion, but has been denied by scientists in Europe since science started there in the Middle Ages. They dissected cadavers looking for the soul, and finding none, declared it non-existent. They claimed this as proof of the paradigm of materialism, reductionism, and mechanism.
The modern equivalent of this search is neurophysiologists looking for consciousness (or a ‘God spot’) in the brain. They too find none there, but cannot deny that consciousness exists, so they declare it the ‘ hard problem’ in science. They are looking in a wrong way, wearing materialistic, reductionist, mechanist spectacles. If they change there for holistic ones, (as this paper seeks to do) they could at least create a more holistic, compassionate NHS.
27

Psychiatrist Dr Iain McGilchrist has studied the left and right hemispheres of the brain in detail, and written a 534 page book about it, called: ‘The Master and his emissary.’ (2010) His title is from a parable about wise master ruling a kingdom, who has to see the whole picture,
(equivalent to the right hemisphere) and who employs an emissary to do his bidding in a distant part (the left hemisphere)
FIGURE 10 LEFT (IDEAS) AND RIGHT (EMOTIONS) HEMISHPERES OF THE BRAIN
Figure 10 ‘Left and right hemispheres of the brain’ is a diagram from a conference he gave in
London on 2.2.13. It shows what each side receives and remembers. This is basically ideas on the left, and emotions on the right (also known poetically as ‘heart.’). His conclusion is that the right brain’s function is to see the big picture, the general direction, the purpose, objectives,
(wisdom) and the left brain’s function is to see the detail (knowledge)
He illustrated this difference with the example of birds such as pigeons, with eyes in the sides of their head (not predators, who have their eyes in front) The survival priority for all animals is that they do not become dinner for a predator, which is more important than finding their own dinner.
Accordingly, they continuously use their left eye (connected to the right hemisphere) to scan the entire sky (360 degree viewing angle) for predators, such as a falcon. They use their right eye
(connected to the left hemisphere) to search for seeds, which they do with great precision (a 3 degree viewing angle)
My conclusion from his work is that the right concept of the soul is not a thing (such as a separate organ) but a hierarchical way of observing and prioritising stimuli from the environment, akin to master (soul=right brain) which is over the servant (mind=left brain).
Jill Balty-Taylor is a scientist who had studied the brain for many years, when she had a haemorrhage in the left hemisphere. She gave a TED talk in which she described how she watched how she slowly lost the ability to write, read, speak and distinguish the difference between herself and the things around her, such as furniture. All was one, as the mystics say.
She eventually recovered and wrote a book about it.
28

My conclusion is that this shows that the right brain tunes in to the waves of consciousness (life force) which is the ‘ground of all being’. In waves in the sea, and radio, there is no separation. It is the left brain (mind, ego, conditioning, programming, software etc) which distinguishes between things and ideas.
30 What is therapy?
The objective of therapy is healing and curing the symptoms of distress and dis-ease (sickness) so that we are free of them. Sickness is disharmony (war) between our soul, mind and body.
Therapy tries to restore harmony between our soul, mind and our body, putting them into the natural hierarchy, with our soul on top, as the observer of our mind and body (as in figure 8 above).
The active ingredient of conventional therapy is cutting (surgery) poisoning (drugs) and burning
(radiation) the body. The active ingredient of complementary therapy is meditation, because therapy (healing) can only happen in an Altered State of Consciousness (ASC) induced by meditation.
An ASC can be induced by drugs, (such as alcohol), but if it is, the drug (alcohol) becomes on top, not the soul. Furthermore, for healing to happen, two essential ingredients have to be present - awareness and love (compassion) – as shown in figure 10, the healing triangle. As I write the Francis report has just been published, which shows that the Mid Staffs hospital had lost its compassion, hence lost it’s ability to heal.
ALTERED STATE OF
CONSCIOUSNESS
(ASC) IN
MEDITATION
AWARENESS
LOVE (COMPASSSION)
31 The two doors into the mindbody
The holistic paradigm underlying complementary therapy and meditation sees the body and mind as an inseparable single entity (called ‘bodymind’, or ‘mindbody’ (psychosomatic) like two sides of the same coin. The MBCT course, teaches mindfulness, which enters this mindbody entity through the door of the mind (cognitive) in the path of awareness. However, this is not the only door.
The other door is that of the body, through music and movement, without words or ideas, in the path of love. Examples are yoga, chanting, dancing (such as 5 rhythms) laughing, whirling,
29

(Dervishes) shaking, (Quakers and Shakers) tai chi, chi gung, falun gong, etc. Both doors are shown on figure 11 ‘Doors to the mind and body, watched by the third eye.’
As mentioned above, distracting the bodymind in this way go back at least to Chrishna
(sometimes spelt Krishna) more than 5,000 years. (whose name gave rise to the concept of
‘Christ consciousness’ , which Buddhists call ‘enlightenment’).
FIGURE 12 DOORS TO THE MIND AND BODY WATCHED BY THE THIRD EYE
Mindfulness (as taught in the MBCT course, and in Buddhist centres) is not enough on its own to heal and cure dis-eases.
Many patients are too hyperactive to sit still and watch their breath for 2 hours a week for 8 weeks. They first need to ‘let off steam’ by discharging their emotions before they can get into stillness.
What the mind suppresses (emotions), the body expresses
(as symptoms) such as hyper-active minds, full of intrusive thoughts, like pop-ups on our computer which will not go away, and drive us mad. To eliminate our symptoms (heal and cure) we first need to express our repressed emotions in meditative (watched) catharsis.
As shown in figure 10, the healing triangle, above, to be healthy, with harmony between our body and mind, we also need love. We therefore need to follow both paths, love and awareness, preferably learned in that order, as that was how they evolved.
These two paths are like two wings, with which we can fly through life, as shown in figure 12.
FIGURE 13 THE TWO WINGS
AWARENESS AND LOVE
PSYCHO SOMATIC
MIND BODY
DOOR DOOR
M
MBCT EBCT
32 From where do the two paths come?
As mentioned above, the path of awareness was developed by Buddha (563-483BC) about 2,500 years ago. It is centred on the core practice called vipassana of watching our breath. This is
30

known as the ‘anchor’ of mindfulness, which is the essence of the MBCT course, as described in the MBCT course textbook. We do it in ‘satsang’, which means ‘sitting in truth.’ Awareness is yang, male, left brain, mental (air body) – oriented.
FIGURE 14 KRISHNA PLAYING ON HIS FLUTE
The path of love is the counterpart of the path of awareness. It is yin, female, right brain, and is physical body-oriented in pleasurable sensations. It is associated with Krishna (sometimes written Chrishna) who is a Hindu deity, regarded as an avatar of Vishnu, and in some traditions considered the Supreme Being.
His name is the origin of ‘Christ’, which is short for:
‘Christ consciousness’, describing the ASC that his followers recognised, known as ‘enlightenment.’
Buddha did not need to tell the people of his day about the path of love, because that was already their way of worship, which they had been practicing in their traditional festivals and rituals for thousands of years.
According to Hindu tradition, Krishna is said to have been an Indian prince, probably born about 5,200 years ago, He is depicted as playing the flute and dancing. (see figure 12) He is also a divine cowherd, tending sacred cows, during the great age of Taurus, and a womaniser epitomising love.
These Hindu practices from the path of love are music and dance rituals designed to get us out of our minds, and into a trance state (ASC). They spread to other religions, and were developed by the Hashamites (a sect of Judaism) and the Sufis (a sect of Islam). I think that it spread to a sect of Christianity called the Quakers and Shakers, who got their name from an ancient shaking ritual that traumatised animals do automatically to discharge adrenaline when the danger has passed. (This is done in the first phase of kundalini meditation) The Quakers sit in silence until the ‘spirit moves them’ to speak, which is a form of meditation.
Music has been used traditionally in all cultures as a reliever of stress. Orpheus (ancient Greek) on his lute was said to calm the savage beasts, (including men). Modern derivations of these practices are known as ‘active meditations’, to differentiate them from inactive Buddhist meditations from the path of awareness.
SECTCo uses active meditations (such as dynamic and kundalini) developed by an Indian meditation leader called Osho (1931-90) who recorded CDs lasting 1 hour which use other ways of getting into a ASC. Dynamic includes: a) Special breathing b) Catharsis, (mindful, emotional release) c) Gibberish, laughing, crying, d) Repeating a mantra e) A sudden stop into silence f) Moving mindfully to music (mindful dancing)
‘What the mind suppresses, the body expresses.’ (as symptoms) These techniques allow the expression of emotions, which have been suppressed, or repressed, which block the free flow of
31

the life force, (love) and make us sick. Expressing them in these active meditations releases this blocked life force energy, which is healing.
SECTCo have made these active meditation practices available in a counterpart course to the
MBCT course, called the Emotion Based Cognitive therapy ( EBCT) course. We repeat dynamic and kundalini meditations ritualistically every week, so that we can empty our garbage can of repressed emotions, and allow in the new energy of more functional programmes, like downloading new software.
33 Why music and movement can be therapeutic
The correct, healthy harmony is shown in figure 15
Rightful hierarchy of master over servant.
If our soul is being dominated and imprisoned by our body or mind, it causes disharmony, dis-ease, and mentally illness. The servant (mind, ego, left brain) has usurped its masters’ (soul, right brain, operator) rightful place, and is pulling us (our soul) one way, while our body is pulling us another way, so we feel torn apart. The mind wants us to go in one direction, and the body wants us to go in another direction, and we (our soul) feels that it is in a war zone.
In active meditations, we allow our body to move
(dance) to music, and start resonating inside. The body starts responding, and sooner or later there comes a moment when the body and the mind are together in one direction for the first time. They become drunk with the music, as in a trance. Then the soul is at ease, because it is not torn apart. (This is why discos are so popular with the young, but as get old, our critical mind dismisses them as childish)
FIGURE 15 RIGHTFUL HIERARCHY MASTER OVER SERVANT
When the body and the mind are engrossed in the music and movement, the soul can slip out of their control, and can become a witness, as the third eye in figure 8. The right hierarchy in figure
15 is restored. This putsthe soul back in its proper place, where it can stand out and look at the whole game that is going on between the mind and the body.
While the mind and body are drunk with the beautiful rhythm, they do not realise that the soul has slipped out of their domination (prison). They don’t normally allow this, because they keep possession of our soul, and do not want to lose their power of domination over it.
Moving to music (dancing, such as in dynamic and kundalini meditations) is a good, drug-free way for the soul (operator, us) to slip out of their hold with no fight or struggle, and watch from the outside. This is the meaning of the word: ‘ecstasy’ - to stand out and watch, which is peaceful, silence, bliss.
This is why watching sport and the performing arts is popular, but most of us do not do this enough to be healthy. When done in a meditation room with a trained facilitator, the effect can be used therapeutically, to practice tools to heal and cure our dis-ease.
32

34 Healing is freeing the soul from the possession by the mind
As mentioned above, we can only be healthy if our soul is on top, watching our mind and body
Soul below it, as in FIGURE 16 HEALTHY SOUL
DOMINATING HEALTHY MIND AND
HEALTHY BODY
Mind Body
However, in most people, their mind dominates their soul and their body, as shown in figure 17.
FIGURE 17 UNHEALTHY MIND DOMINATING SOUL AND BODY
Unhealthy mind
In people whoso bodies are physically ill, their sick body dominates their soul and their mind, as shown in FIGURE 18 UNHEALTHY BODY
DOMINATING SOUL AND MIND
Soul
Unhealthy body
Mind
Soul Body
We illustrate this issue to our participants using a model block of wood or tin, in which two opposite faces are marked ‘SOUL’, two opposite faces are marked ‘MIND’, and two opposite faces are marked
‘BODY’. The block can be placed in positions of figure 16, 17, 18, to serve as a reminder of the desired outcome of meditation, namely as figure 16 with the soul on top.
This model can also be used to illustrate the effect of taking drugs (recreational and prescription) say alcohol, or nicotine. These are addictive if taken to excess, when instead of the soul being on top, the drug is on top, controlling our behaviour, instead of the soul. With drugs, we have not solved healed or cured our problem of intrusive thoughts, but added the side effects of the drug.
35 Lovers versus Buddhas
To be healed, whole, balanced and healthy, we need to integrate the healing triangle of love and awareness into our lifestyle, by practicing meditations from both the path of love and the path of awareness. This is called flying with two wings (see figure 11 above). Unfortunately, few meditators follow both paths. Having learned one, they tend to reject the other, in religious
‘holier than thou’ exclusivity.
Buddhists who practice mindfulness exclusively, may be repressing their love, so are living halfheartedly.
Lovers are also living half-heartedly if they are wrapped up in their loving and know nothing of awareness. Such Buddhists are repressing their love, and such lovers are repressing their awareness. To be whole, and healthy, we need to be both Buddhists and lovers together.
Unfortunately organised religion has tended to divide people. Lovers have been programmed to think they are against Buddhas, and Buddhas have been programmed to think they are against
33

lovers. And because of this antagonism, the lover is repressing his intrinsic Buddha, and the
Buddha is repressing his intrinsic lover.
The lover is beautiful in his song and dance, but his awareness is nil. The Buddha’s awareness is very clear, but is very dry, with no juice in it, like a desert where no flowers bloom, and no greenery can be seen. Both are deprived. The lover lives an unconscious life. The Buddha lives a life without love. SECTCo wants to heal its participants into whole people, who are healthy, so offers therapeutic courses that integrate lovers and Buddhas.
36 Olympic athletes are drunk with endorphins from the path of love
The London 2012 Olympics showed the world how athlete’s minds can drive their bodies to incredible performances. To get to this level, years of ritualistic practice is needed. They are practicing the path of love, but taken to excess, making them ‘fitness freaks.’
The supreme (total) effort required gives its own reward in the release of endorphins, which like dancing make the body drunk, so that ‘the soul can slip out and watch’ (as described above).
They are the ‘lovers’ with a high ‘feel good’ factor, but it does not make them enlightened, unless they also practice the path of awareness. The tragic case of Oscar Pistorius, who shot his lover out of fear that she was an intruder, shows that he had not practiced meditation from the path of awareness, and seems to have been a nervous wreck with paranoia.
Buddhists who spend decades meditating may similarly take the path of awareness to excess, but it does not make them enlightened, unless they allow themselves to love and be loved. My impression is that they can become addicted to mindfulness practice, as a distraction and excuse for not allowing themselves to form intimate loving relationships.
Men and women need relationships with each other to be whole and healthy, but many have got broken hearts, which make it difficult to find soul mates of the opposite sex. Their specific needs are different. Men tend to have the yang energy of giving, but lack the yin energy of receiving with an open heart. Women have the yin energy of receiving with an open heart, but feel vulnerable, so need protection. Men can give this, in exchange for support with provision (food, washing etc) To be able to live together in harmony we have to marry internally our animus with our anima with meditation, because only two meditators can live in love.
37 Which path shall I try? - The enhanced sandwich MBCT course
This is a difficult question to answer, as everyone is different. I think that I am typical of men, who tend to be stuck in their heads, and find it difficult to relax enough to be able to watch their breath, and live in their bodies. I therefore need the active meditations from the path of love.
However, women are generally much more meditative than men (probably because having children forces them to live in their bodies in the present moment) They seem to be relaxed enough to benefit from the MBCT course straight away. My own experience is as follows.
In 2001, my second wife introduced me to active (music and movement) meditation (mainly dynamic and kundalini) which enter the bodymind through the body door. I found them beneficial from the start, and they gradually cleared the ‘muddy water’ (emotional garbage) of my hyper-active mind. I have been doing dynamic 3 times per week, and kundalini once per week since then (over 10 years, estimated total of 1,500 dynamics, and 500 kundalinis to date)
In 2005 (having been meditating for 4 years) I first tried mindfulness (one hour of silent sitting in vipassana), but got no benefit from it as I was too restless. However, 3 years later, by 2008
34

(having by then done about 1,000 dynamics and 300 kundalinis) I was sufficiently relaxed to receive benefit from the MBCT course, which transformed me because it explained what was happening.
SECTCo want to offer a comprehensive meditation service on GP prescription to everyone who wants it, and believe that patients should be able to choose by which door (path) they first enter the mindbody. We therefore offer courses from both paths. We have developed what we call the
‘Emotion Based Cognitive Therapy(EBCT) course, which is 10 weeks of different active (music and movement) meditations. These include humming, singing, whirling, tai chi like movements, laughing, gibberish, catharsis. As with the MBCT course, we give all participants a course book
(about 70 pages, available on request) describing the process in detail, together with the science behind it as appendices.
SECTCo also offers dynamic and kundalini meditations sandwiched before and after the MBCT course, which we call the ‘enhanced sandwich MBCT course.’ One of our participants in 2011
(Michael Hoy) gave us the following testimonial to dynamic meditation:
‘When I first came to dynamic mediation I was not in a good place, many things in my life had gone wrong and I was extremely depressed. I didn’t want to take anti-depressants because I felt
I would never get off them. As it turned out dynamic turned out to be a lifeline, literally a helping hand to lift me out of despair.’
Another man came to me in great anxiety with a panic attack in Aug 2012. I offered him dynamic, which he did it for 10 successive mornings. He got increasing benefit from it, and has not had an attack since, (6 months) so he was apparently cured by it. I had the same experience, and have met many men who have said the same. It is anger management by releasing the emotional charge that causes anger, and many people would benefit from it.
38 Summary of a trial of positivity before and after SECTCo’s 3 MBCT courses in 2012
(extracted from 17 page report, available on request) a) Numbers attending
Course Number who completed course Average attendance out of 10 sessions
3
4
5
Total
12
11 (6 repeaters)
12 (4 repeaters)
35 (25 different people)
8.0
8.1
7.1
7.7
b) 22 participants in the trial The number of participants who filled in a pre course questionnaire was 25, of whom 22 completed post course questionnaires. The average pre course points score was 116, and the average post course score was 138. The average improvement was 22 points (19% higher than pre course points)
c) The best half of the sample (11) improved their average pre-course score of 104 by 31 to
135, a 30% improvement.
d) This trial shows that SECTCo’s MBCT courses gets good results. Early trials, (Teasdale et al
2000, Ma and Teasdale 2004) halved the 5 year relapse rate for patients who had 3 or more previous bouts of depression. This earned the course NICE-recommendation in Dec 2004.
A trial in Brighton in 2004 with 17 members of staff of Brighton General hospital also obtained good results. There was a decrease in the level of anxiety in 8 of the 11 participants who
35

completed more than 12 classes, from a mean of 9.4 (borderline abnormal) to 6.1 (normal on the
Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale HADS) e) Questionnaires used for the trial
We used 3 pages of questions, called A, B. C, totalling 38 questions.
Page A is 14 questions from the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well Being Scale (WEMWBS) 2006
Page B is 14 questions from the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI)
Page C is 10 questions from the revised Life Orientation Test (LOT)
These measures were chosen for their relative focus on wellbeing, mindfulness, and resilience levels, which in 2010 was identified as a priority area for Brighton and Hove by the Director of
Public Health, Dr Tom Scanlon, in his annual report.
Psychometric analysis of the FMI in a sample of students found it internally reliable (alpha=0.85) and significantly positively correlated with measures of mindfulness, emotional experience, selfcompassion, psychological symptoms, and dissociation. (Baer et al, 2006) The measure had been shown to be sensitive to change in psycholoigical intervention (Chadwick et al 2009)
36 SECTCo’s menu of therapeutic meditation courses
a) Venue Most of these are held at our shop at 3, Boundary Rd, West Hove. (near the Kingsway coast road, A259 opposite Aldrington Basin)
b) Price To build a track record, we provide these courses for donations, which are usually given in kind, mainly as time given freely as directors of SECTCo. We presently have about 10 directors.
(see letterhead) This makes the company patient-centred.
c) MBCT courses 930-12pm. The present course started on Thursday 3.1.13, and ends on
7.3.13. The next MBCT course starts on Thursday 21 st March to 30 rd May.
Participants can make it into a sandwich course by doing dynamic first, and kundalini afterwards, as an optional extra, taking the whole of a Thursday morning. This enhances the MBCT course by allowing catharsis (emotional release) before and after.
d) Dynamic meditation At Revitalise, opposite Hove town hall, (back door) from 730-830am every Tuesday and Thursday, and at 8-9 am on Saturdays, price donations or £4, or £20 for a month’s season ticket.
e) Emotion Based Cognitive Therapy (EBCT) course 930-12pm The present one started on
Tuesdays, 8.1.13 and ending on 13.3.13. The next one starts on 19 th March and ends on 28 th
May. It is recommended to do this as an enhanced sandwich, starting with dynamic at Revitalise, and ending with kundalini.
f) Family Constellation group days on the 4 th Sunday of the month, from 10-5pm. This provides healing from family patterns of conditioning, by representing family members. The technique was introduced into Germany in the 1980s by Bert Hellinger ( www.hellinger.com
) and has spread world wide.
There is more information about these courses and our campaign on our website www.sectco.org
. If you have any questions, please contact me on johnkapp@btinternet.com
, or
01273 417997, or write to me at 22, Saxon Rd Hove BN3 4LE.
36

g) Healing Code courses I have recently went on a course about this meditative technique, which should be included in the menu. It is a very rapid way of healing and curing almost any condition, using directed rapport and empathy. It was run by Jack and Anne Stewart, see www.thehealingcodes.co.uk
. It is based on a book of the same name by Alex Lloyd and Ben
Johnson in USA. They can be contacted at jack@thehealingcodes.co.uk
. 01925 479257. Glebe avenue, Grappenhall, Warrington, WA4 2SQ.
The following courses are run by other organisations, but should be included in the menu:
h) The Expert Patient Programme (EPP) It is for 2.5 hours per week for 6 weeks (15 hours per course) see www.expertpatients.co.uk
, Locally the manager is Charlotte Stevens, who can be contacted on 01273 295490, charlotte.stevens1@nhs.net
.
i) Singing For Pleasure (SFP) courses, A weekly group for those who wish to improve their resilience through expression. Led by Simon Gray, who has 30 years experience in this field.
Further information from Robert or Corinne 01273 555089, or Simon Gray simon@firstnightcabaret.co.uk
.
j) Better Breathing Singing (BBS) Group, www.singforbetterhealth.co.uk
, Documentary: http://youtu.be/EcxhyJzvvNU Facilitator Udita Everitt, (Central Hove and Whitehawk) who has been running these courses for the PCT since 2008.
k) Looking after your back’ run by chiropractors who offer NICE-recommended spinal manipulation for low back pain, which accounts for 1 in 3 patients in primary care. Chiropractic
First, Hove, mark_yacoub@hotmail.com
l) Alexander Technique, which is also NICE-recommended for low back pain. Alexander
Technique College, www.alexander-technique-college.com
, Carolyn Nicholls@btinternet.com
, m) Shiatsu, which is needle-less acupuncture, which is also NICE-recommended for low back pain. Brighton Shiatsu College, Debbie Collins, brighton@shiatsucollege.co.uk
m) Martial arts, which have been scientifically shown to reduce domestic violence in Hull.
( www.whitecranemartialarts.co.uk
)
n) ‘Take control of your life’, www.paulcburr.com
, doctapaul@paulcburr.com
o) Disease-specific courses which, such as Living Well with Cancer, run by the Penny
Brohn centre (formerly the Bristol Cancer Help Centre) www.pennybrohn.org
, Georgia.diebel@pennybrohn.org
SECTCo still offers to run 600 of these courses pa in the city, as shown in their bid submitted to the Community Mental Health Support Prospectus on 23.7.12, which is reproduced in part in appendix 2.
39 How do these courses work to prevent, heal and cure?
Our courses teach participants meditations tools to manage their own stress, by relaxing themselves in body and mind. Their frontal lobes can then reconnect, and they become aware of what is causing their symptoms. They then have the power to change their lifestyle to remove the cause, and heal and cure their symptoms. Ideally they should take a sandwich course of the following: a) An active meditation (dynamic) which take them through the natural cycle of sympathetic arousal, followed by parasympathetic relaxation.
37

b) The MBCT course, in which they learn to watch their breath, and live in their body, so that they can listen to it’s messages (such as what to eat, when and how much, so that they gain their ideal weight without dieting) c) Kundalini meditation, which starts with shaking to remove adrenaline (as animals in the wild do after being traumatised) then dancing, to release endorphins, which make them feel good, then listening, and lying in silence, which fully relaxes them into their natural blissfulness.
Our MBCT and EBCT courses brochure is given in appendix 3.
40 Conclusions and recommendations
Mental health is now the top priority for the CCGs, because the mental health service in England is not worthy of the name ‘service’. Drug treatments generally do more harm than good, (so decommissioning would have the double benefit of stopping harm, and freeing the money for this programme. CBT has a year waiting time (in Sussex, except for emergencies) and its costeffectiveness could be made a hundredfold better by combining it in MBCT courses. The way to prevent mental illness and dementia, and reduce health inequalities, is by teaching patients meditation self-help tools to manage their own stress, and adopt sustainable lifestyles.
This needs education, education, education. Commissioners in NHS and Local Authorities should contract with third sector providers to run a menu of therapeutic courses for patients and sick public sector staff free at the point of use on GP prescription.
SECTCo have bid to run 600 courses pa, for £4 mpa, and have developed a system by which the teachers can be paid for this from the mental health budget with vouchers (see www.sectco.org
, section 6 Bid for Community Mental Health Support dated 23.7.12) (see appendix 2)
We recommend commissioners to negotiate a contract for a trial pilot project with SECTCo, and integrate this education policy into their commissioning plans. If implemented in full, we believe that this policy could halve the public health statistics, and double the health of the city (and the nation) by 2020, at 20% less cost overall to the taxpayer (see appendix 4).
41 Bibliography
1 ‘The Mindful Way through Depression, - Freeing yourself from chronic unhappiness.’ by Mark
Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn. 2007 Guilford Press ISBN 978-1-
59385-128-6. This is the ‘bible’ which sets the syllabus for the MBCT course.
2 ‘Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy’, by Rebecca Crane, 2009 Routledge ISBN 978-0-415-
44502-3
3 ‘The Mindful Therapist – a clinician’s guide to mindsight and neural integration’ by Dr Dan
Siegel, 2010 www.DrDanSiegel.com
4 ‘The Mindful Brain’ by Dr Dan Siegel
5 Mindfulness – a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world’ by Dr Mark Williams and
Danny Penman. 2011.
6 ‘The Mindful Manifesto – How doing less and noticing more can help us thrive in a stressed out world’ by Dr Johty Heaversedge (GP) and Ed Halliwell 2010
7 ‘Mindfulness for Dummies’ by Shamash Alidina, 2010
38

8 ‘Full Catastrophe Living’ by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn
9 Teach us to sit still – A sceptic’s search for health and healing’ by Tim Parks, 2010
New report from top economists, psychologists,
psychiatrists and NHS managers
A report published today by the London School of Economics and Political Science reveals the horrific scale of mental illness in Britain – and how little the NHS does about it.
Mental illness is now nearly a half of all ill health suffered by people under 65 – and it is more disabling than most chronic physical disease. Yet only a quarter of those involved are in any form of treatment.
The report by the Mental Health Policy Group – a distinguished team of economists, psychologists, doctors and NHS managers convened by Professor Lord Layard of the LSE Centre for Economic Performance – concludes that:
The under-treatment of people with crippling mental illnesses is the most glaring case of health inequality in our country. It is a shocking form of discrimination because effective psychological treatments exist but are still not widely enough available.
Therapies like cognitive behavioural therapy lead to rapid recovery from depression or anxiety disorders in over 40% of cases. If they were more widely available, this would cost the NHS little or nothing because of the savings on physical healthcare. The cost would also be fully covered by savings on incapacity benefits and lost taxes.
For these reasons the government started in 2008 an excellent 6-year programme for Improving
Access to Psychological Therapy (IAPT). This is making the situation much better than it was, especially in some areas. However, in other areas local commissioners are failing to fund the necessary expansion and are even cutting mental health provision, especially for children.
It is essential that the IAPT programme is completed as planned, since even this will only provide for 15% of need. Beyond 2014 there should be another major expansion, aimed especially at the millions of people who have mental illness on top of chronic physical conditions.
Lord Layard says:
‘If local NHS Commissioners want to improve their budgets, they should all be expanding their provision of psychological therapy. It will save them so much on their physical healthcare budgets that the net cost will be little or nothing.
39

Lord Layard adds a call for the challenges of mental health to be placed at the heart of government:
‘Mental health is so central to the health of individuals and of society that it needs its own cabinet minister.’
ENDS
Note to Editors: “How Mental Health Loses Out in the NHS” is available from: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/research/mentalhealth/default.asp
The report is chaired by Prof Lord Layard. Other authors include Professor Stephen Field, chair of the Futures Forum, as well as 7 other professors of economics, psychology and psychiatry, 2 other economists, and 2 NHS managers. Names are shown in the report and all members are happy to be contacted.
Paper supporting SECTCo’s application bid for a grant for community mental health provision from April 2013-16 to Brighton and Hove’s Commissioning Prospectus (1)
23.7.12
Contents
page
1 Executive summary 3
2 What is the scale of the problem of mental health issues? 6
3 What is SECTCo? 6
4 What is SECTCo offering? 7
5 What is the objective of SECTCo courses? 7
6 How do SECTCo’s courses build resilience? 8
7 Who may participate on SECTCo courses? 8
8 What rights do patients have to SECTCo courses? 8
9 What do you mean by ‘doctor referral’? 9
10 How does SECTCo reduce stigma against mental illness? 9
11 How do doctors refer patients to SECTCo courses? 9
12 What contra-indications apply to participating in SECTCo courses? 10
13 Are SECTCo’s course facilitators qualified? 10
14 What emotional support does SECTCo provide to participants? 10
15 What is the basis of payment for SECTCo courses? 11
16 What if the courses have more than the minimum number? 11
17 How many courses does SECTCo offer to run each year if we get a grant? 11
18 Course A The Expert Patient Programme (EPP) 13
19 Course B Singing for health 13
20 Course C The Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course 13
21 Course D Family Constellation days 14
22 Course E Dynamic meditation 14
40

23 Course F Emotion Based Cognitive Therapy (EBCT) courses 14
24 Other courses 14
25 What will the outcome be on public health of these SECTCo courses? 15
26 But there isn’t enough money in the Community Mental Health budget for this. 15
27 How would the cost-effectiveness of our courses be monitored? 15
28 Conclusion. Please commissi0on this mental health support programme 16
References
14
Appendix 1 Voucher for SECTCo courses 17
Appendix 2 Letter to the chairman of the Clinical Commissioning Group dated 22.6.12
Appendix 3 SECTCo board of directors 21
Appendix 4 SECTCo Memorandum and Articles 23
Appendix 5 Outcome analysis of a MBCT course 28.3.12-31.5.12. 25
TABLE 1 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT OF COURSES OFFERED IN YEAR 1 (2013-14) 12
TABLE 2 PATIENTS TREATED, AND COSTS INCURRED IN EACH OF THE 3 YEARS 3,13
1 Executive summary a) Microcosm of Lansley’s macrocosm NHS
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’ Health and Social Care Act of 27.3.12 creates the legal framework for a new macrocosm NHS, which is patient-centred, community-based, bottom up, in place of the previous provider-led, top down one since 1948. He said recently: ‘What we are looking for is good, clear, radical thoughts about how we can design better services.’
In this bid, SECTCo is offering to create a microcosm of this new type of NHS in the mental health services in the city of Brighton and Hove. We hope that it will be accepted as a pilot scheme for the whole country. It is costed as a Service Level Agreement, but it should be regarded as a vision which is subject to contract, and not binding on us in detail.
b) Objective
The objective of the Community Mental Health Support programme as stated in the Prospectus
(reference 1, p3) is reproduced as follows in summary (with page numbers):
‘To foster the development of services across our local communities which promote and improve the health and wellbeing of people living in the city……and to introduce new and exciting opportunities for innovation…that make a real difference in the lives of local people…focussing on outcomes.’ (p3-4)
Commissioning principles. Designing the future shape of services with residents, harnessing their knowledge and experience; ensuring services focus on what matters most to residents. (Coproduction) ….At a local level these connections give rise to a feeling of ‘belonging’ and wellbeing, sometimes developed through collective action in the form of community participation of voluntary action.’ (p5)
‘The overall aim is to improve mental health and wellbeing …to ensure greater focus on prevention and early stage intervention, as well as developing a greater range of community services….to help support social inclusion and recovery. ‘(p7) ‘Around 30,000 people have common mental health problems (eg anxiety and depression)’ This is 12% of the 258,000 population.
41

SECTCo is bidding because it was set up in 2010 to address these issues. The programme of therapeutic courses that we are now offering to this Prospectus have been available in the private sector for years to clients who self-refer and pay the going rate. However, SECTCo’s innovation to reduce health inequalities is to provide these courses free at the point of use to patients on doctors’ prescription by voucher, which enables the provider to be paid under public sector contract. c) Mass-provision of the MBCT course
In particular, SECTCo aims to reduce the waiting time for the NICE-recommended Mindfulness
Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) 8 week course from the present 20 years (see paragraph 8).
Under the NHS constitution, patients have the statutory right to this course if their doctor says it is clinically appropriate. This course meets all the QIPP standards (Quality, Safety, Effectiveness,
Patient Experience, Innovation, Prevention and Productivity)
GPs should therefore consider it for the 1 in 3 patients in primary care who present with anxiety and depression. Polls show that 1 in 2 GPs do this already, but if referred, the patient has to pay, which most cannot afford. To avoid being taken to judicial review by disaffected patients claiming their statutory right to this course for free, commissioners should let contracts for it’s massprovision. ( as this bid proposes) For details, see the papers about this course on our website www.sectco.org
.
In the paper appended to the Prospectus: ‘Description of Brighton and Hove Wellbeing,’ the MBCT course is specifically mentioned under a heading of ‘Stress management courses, including MBCT’.
In another appended paper called: ‘Proposal for a comprehensive service for people with
complex needs (personality disorder) ‘ the key elements are stated as: ‘A partnership model between statutory services, third sector organisations (such as SECTCo) and service users…….
Service users having a central role in decision making, policy structure and running of therapeutic programmes ………(As SECTCo provides) .
A recovery model whereby a philosophy of hope and belief in the possibility of full integration into community life is central. Education and active work towards attitude change and challenging stigma….opportunity for befriending, support and networking with other members…..basic psycho-education… ………(As SECTCo provides)
………CBT-based skills development groups for emotional regulation (STEPPS and STAIRWAYS,
DELIVERING SPFT) ….Family and carer groups….Strong links and joint working with mental health services, third sector services (such as SECTCo) and other statutory services. Clear link with joined up pathways. This will include Close communication with GPs for those held within
Primary Care.’
SECTCo meets in full the Prospectus’s objective and aims, so we believe that we should be awarded this contract. However, the programme’s budget of £1.8 mpa in total is not enough to meet the inherent need for these services in the city. Last year the budget for this programme was for £2.3 mpa, under which 33 contracts were awarded for worthy community support schemes. None of these contracts were for the therapeutic courses that SECTCo is now offering.
We do not want to displace these other worthy schemes, particularly as the budget for this year is cut by 30%. d) This programme should be financed out of the NHS mental health budget
42

Patients do not care from which budget treatments are funded, and the Prospectus states that there is a large need for community mental health support in the city. Our menu of therapeutic courses (see table 1 below) could provide this, if we are sufficiently commissioned and contracted to do so. To make a significant improvement, every patient for whom our courses are clinically appropriate should be able to access these courses by the third year (2015-16) at the latest, within a waiting time of 18 weeks.
Accordingly, we have estimated the inherent demand for these courses, allowing build up time in the first and second years. Our price for providing them is £1-3 mpa in the first year, £2-6 million in the second year, and £4-12 million in the third year, as shown in table 2.
TABLE 2 NUMBER OF COURSES, PATIENTS TREATED, AND COSTS INCURRED IN EACH
OF THE 3 YEARS OF THE CONTRACT
Year Number of courses pa
2013/14 600
2014/15 1,200
Number of participants treated pa
Cost to the commissioner £ mpa
4,400 - 13,000 £1.1 - £3.2
8,800 - 23,000 £2.2 - £ 6.4
2015/16 2,400 17,600 - 46,000 £4.4 - £12.8 d) We are applying to provide a comprehensive mental wellbeing scheme for the city
To address this funding shortfall, we wrote to the chairman of the CCG (Dr Xavier Nalletamby) on
7.6.12 (3) suggesting that the new Wellbeing Service should issue a similar Prospectus for a much larger budget, financed from the NHS mental health budget. This is about £55 mpa, which is 11% of the total NHS budget for the city of about £500 mpa.
Spending £12.8 mpa in the third year on the maximum uptake of 46,000 patients represents only
23% of the mental health budget. We believe that investing this money on these therapeutic courses will get many patients back to work, and prevent others from becoming sicker, and incurring rescue costs, such as unemployment benefit, hospital admissions, policing, homelessness totalling more than the £12.8 mpa spent on this programme.
This comprehensive mental wellbeing programme is needed for the city. SECTCo has written this bid as an offer to provide this programme, to the same Prospectus, but for a larger budget that can pay for it.
2 What is the scale of the problem of mental health issues? a) Nationally
Nationally, the NHS was recently (18.6.12) accused of ‘failing to treat at all 750,000 patients, out of 6 million with mental health problems’, according to the report from the London School of
Economics (2) The minister for mental health (Paul Burstow) said in response: ‘We will shortly publish plans to make sure that the NHS, communities, voluntary organisations and others can play their part in improving the nation’s mental health.’
We welcome the minister’s statement, and believe that SECTCo should be considered as part of that movement. We also welcome the opening up of the NHS treatment market to Any Qualified
Provider (AQP) under the Health and Social Care Act (which got royal assent on 27.3.12) as manifested by SECTCo being invited to bid for this contract. We hope that we will be regarded as a ‘qualified provider.’ b) Locally
43

The city has a population of one 200 th of England, so proportionally, this statistic of 750,000 implies that 3,750 patients are left untreated in the city. We believe that this statistic is true, but that it is just the tip of an iceberg. The basic problem is that drug-based treatments alleviate, but do not cure mental illness, and that there is insufficient provision of psychological (talking) therapies, such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)
For example, there were 33,813 admissions (4) to Sussex hospitals last year for alcohol-related conditions, which basically is a mental illness of addiction. The report stated that this number is
11% up on last year, when there were just over 30,000 admissions, and that ‘Every city, district and Borough throughout Sussex is reporting a rise in hospital stays.’ c) 12% are depressed
The Prospectus says (p11) that there are ‘around 30,000 people in the city with common mental health problems (eg anxiety and depression)’. These people are not being effectively treated, because if they were, the public health statistics would be improving. However, these statistics are deteriorating year on year, and have been doing so consistently, despite a doubling of the health budget in real terms over the last decade. d) IAPT and LIVE meetings
For many years SECTCo’s directors have attended Improving Access To Psychological Therapies
(IAPT) meetings (until 2008) and since then, Gateway LIVE (Listen to the Voice of Experience) meeting of mental health service users. The overall impression given is that the treatments offered are inadequate. A common complaint is over-medicalisation with drugs which sometimes do more harm than good. Generally, patients want choice, including drug-free treatments, such as CBT, but this does not work for every patient, and is often rationed to only 6 sessions, which is often not enough. e) 14% of older people are depressed
An article in the Evening Argus (5) under a title of ‘Depression an issue for the elderly’, reported that 5,000 people over 65, (14%) ‘battle a low mood. It is believed that this is largely due to social isolation. Age UK has seen a rise in cases of depression among older people…..social contact is very important. …………..A Council spokesman said: ‘We’re keenly aware that depression is a big issue among older people, and we work closely with the local NHS to provide a range of services to tackle it. Social isolation can often be a factor for older people. A wide range of day activities are provided by the council, and in the wider community, that can help tackle isolation by encouraging people to get out doing interesting things and meeting people. For a list of activities for older people in Brighton and Hove visit www.brightonhove.gov.uk/DayActivities , or phone the council’s Adult Social Care hotline 295555.’
3 What is SECTCo?
SECTCo stands for Social Enterprise Complementary Therapy Company. As our name implies, we are a social enterprise, not for profit limited liability company. Our Memorandum and Articles are shown in appendix 4, below. We are clinically run by a board of directors, most of whom are complementary therapists, see appendix 3. For further details, please see our website www.sectco.org
.
4 What is SECTCo offering?
In this bid, SECTCo is offering therapeutic courses to combat depression by giving people tools to cope with their emotions and negative thoughts. Teaching people in groups is much more costeffective treatment than one to one CBT. This is because one facilitator can teach many patients at the same time, and because patients learn from each other. Our courses combat the feeling of isolation by fostering the feeling of belonging to a peer-support group.
44

SECTCo courses promote all the objectives and aims of this Prospectus, namely promoting community and individual mental health and wellbeing, independence, collaboration, partnership working, innovation, creativity, and social capital. We believe that our courses would be clinically appropriate to the 1 in 3 patients in primary care who present with anxiety and depression, under the following paragraphs of the Prospectus:
3.2 Persons requiring pyscho-social support including outreach.
3.3 Persons requiring Day services, by running courses at the designated community day centres.
3.4 Persons with complex needs and personality disorders.
3.5 Persons requiring employment support.
3.6-7 Older people.
3.9-12 Carers
5 What is the objective of SECTCo courses?
SECTCo courses help participants to build resilience, by equipping them with the tools that they need to safely maintain good mental health in challenging circumstances, such as following bereavement, experiencing suicidal thoughts, adjusting to a disability, becoming a carer for others, dealing with unemployment, etc.
SECTCo courses work because they empower patients to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing. They foster resilience by showing participants that they are stronger than they thought they were, and have inner resources that they did not know they had, based on the community around them. They give patients tools to deal with stress.
The syllabi for our courses are evidenced based on sound science, particularly neuro-science, under what is called ‘neuro-plasticity.’ This shows that people are ‘soft wired’ to behave in habitual ways, but that they can be given the free will to change their attitudes by good education, such as SECTCo’s courses. Our courses are based on the following principles: a) Ideally having NICE-recommendation, which is the gold standard of evidence based. b) Otherwise, having a good track record of working in the private sector. c) The participants are given a motivationally inspiring, supported environment so that they are ready to learn the new ideas presented in the courses. d) The participants are given a motivationally inspiring, supported environment to be ready to change their behaviour, in an attitude of ‘yes I can….’ e) The participants are taught habits which make them feel good, and which they can practice regularly in their daily lives, so that this gets hard wired into their brains.
The course material is summarised in later paragraphs, below. More information is available on our website, www.sectco.org
. SECTCo also has unpublished information,( such as the course text books) which is available on request to the secretary. He would be pleased to engage with commissioners wishing to go into detail about what we are teaching, and the scientific evidence behind it.
6 How do SECTCo’s courses build resilience?
Resilience is based on each individuals’ feeling of being supported by their community (including family, friends, neighbours, peer groups, teams, colleagues, membership of clubs and societies)
The main cause of mental illness is isolation, which is the emotional feeling of lack of sufficient support to cope with life’s challenges.
SECTCo courses build resilience by fostering peer group support, and a sense of belonging to a community comprising the facilitator, assistant facilitators, and other participants of each course.
45

The courses also give participants awareness and understanding of why they feel as they do.
This awareness empowers them to change their habits of behaviour to function better. This creates a virtuous spiral, the better they get, the better they get.
Appendix 5 is an independent Outcome Analysis report of a course run by SECTCo from 28.3.12 to 31.5.12 for 12 participants, of whom 9 returned post course questionnaires. All these showed a shift in frequency of positive feelings, well-being, and levels of resilience.
7 Who may participate on SECTCo courses?
Since 2010, SECTCo has been offering MBCT courses in the private sector to clients who selfrefer, and pay the going rate. However, we know that many people who would benefit from our courses cannot afford them, so are excluded. We therefore welcome this opportunity to bid for a grant of public money to enable patients referred by a doctor to access our courses free at the point of use.
We believe in inclusivity, and that patients instinctively know whether they are ready for our courses. We hope that doctors will give patients the ability to choose the course that is right for them at the time.
8 What rights do patients have to SECTCo courses?
The Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course is recommended by the National
Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Depressed patients have had the statutory right to it if their doctor says it is clinically appropriate since the NHS Constitution became law on
21.1.10.
The waiting time for these courses on the NHS in Sussex has been very long. Until 2011 it was
2,000 years, because only one facilitator (Robert Marx) was commissioned by the monopoly provider of mental health services, Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust (SPFT) to run 4 course per year for up to 20 patients. This enabled up to 80 patients pa to receive a course, for the whole of Sussex, with 160,000 depressed patients. John Kapp is a member of SPFT and attended the AGM in 2010, and asked questions about this. The clinical director, Dr Kay McDonald, said publicly that 18 facilitators were to be trained in 2011.
To update the present waiting time, John Kapp spoke to SPFT’s MBCT trainer, Robert Marx, on
19.7.12. Robert confirmed that they have trained many more facilitators, but refused to give any number, or how many courses they expected to be offering. All that Robert would say is: ‘SPFT are running a rolling programme of MBCT courses for patients in Sussex, and the waiting time is now zero.’
Assuming that 20 facilitators each facilitate 20 courses pa, for 20 participants per course, 8,000 patients pa could receive a course. If Sussex GPs deemed it clinically appropriate for the 160,000 depressed patients in Sussex, the waiting time would reduce 100 fold from 2,000 to 20 years.
Those patients could therefore be given an appointment for an MBCT course in 2032.
Waiting times for hip replacements used to be many years until the market was opened up to private sector providers in 2008, since when it has reduced to 18 weeks. Copying that precedent,
SECTCo was set up in 2010 to reduce the waiting time for MBCT courses to 18 weeks. This seems to be the accepted norm, but is 4 months, which is still much too long for people who feel suicidal.
SECTCo has been offering to bid to run these courses for the last 2 years, but we were not invited to do so until 15.5.12, after SPFT’s monopoly was broken, and the market was opened up
46

by royal assent to the Health and Social Care Act on 27.3.12. On behalf of mental health patients, we welcome this opportunity to provide a mental health service worthy of the name
‘service’, by the mass-commissioning and mass-provision of therapeutic courses to patients on doctor referral.
9 What do you mean by ‘doctor referral’?
Patients only have the statutory right to NICE-recommended treatment on the public purse if a doctor says that it is clinically appropriate. Accordingly SECTCo will treat every patient so referred. Normally that would be the patient’s GP, or their Occupational Health doctor if they are a public sector employee who is sick. SECTCo’s course facilitators are not doctors or qualified to assess patients to say whether the course is clinically appropriate for them, so the legal liability for that assessment rests with the referring doctor. We trust doctors not to refer patients who are not yet fit to take our courses.
10 How does SECTCo reduce stigma against mental illness?
SECTO reduces stigma against mental illness in a practical way, in line with government policy to tackle mental health discrimination. We welcome the announcement (20.7.12) of Lord
Stevenson’s Bill to eliminate this stigma throughout society, and remove inequalities, such as the in-eligibility to do jury service if you have been mentally ill.
We actively promote inclusion of all, and accept patients on referral regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, spiritual beliefs, or any other label. The driving force behind our courses is to reject limitations which others may have placed upon us, and help everyone to reach their full potential. We teach understanding and empathy, first with ourselves, and then towards others, which is the basis of tolerance.
At the same time, we recognise the negative effects of past labelling, discrimination, and oppressive practices, and react sensitively to those who have experienced such judgements. We work in partnership with everyone to re-establish our own internal resilience as our locus of control. To this end, we call patients referred to us ‘prospective participants’ until they have signed up for one of our courses, and ‘participants’ when and after they have done so.
11 How do doctors refer patients to SECTCo courses?
We offer to take referrals from doctors in any way that commissioners may decide. This bid is based on doctors referring patients to us on a SECTCo voucher, which is a prescription for a
SECTCo course. An example of a SECTCo voucher is given in appendix 1, which should be regarded as an indication of the issues that need to be addressed, rather than a legal document.
We will accept any change of wording decided by the commissioners.
We anticipate that take up of such a voucher scheme is likely to be slow, and may well be resisted in some quarters. We are willing to work with commissioners and GP practices to create a workable scheme, and sort out any teething problems as they occur.
12 What contra-indications apply to participating in SECTCo courses?
There are no known contra-indications to patients taking SECTCo courses. However, to benefit fully from them participants must have reasonable command of English, and be able to work in a group setting with an attention span of an hour. Some of our venues require participants to climb stairs.
We realise that most patients at first may be anxious about joining a group of strangers, and that that the word ‘course’ of ‘class’ may trigger unhappy memories of other groups, such as school.
We are sensitive to this initial feeling of fear, and do our best to quickly change it to a feeling of
47

friendship in a peer-support structure. Unlike school or college, participants are not judged, marked, or singled out in any way, and there is no obligation to perform to any standard.
Our courses do not actively explore triggers, or the causes of an individual’s distress, so are therefore unlikely to cause or escalate this. However, if a participant does experience it, we provide for time out, and assist them to manage this, as mentioned in paragraph 14.
We offer a wide variety of courses, as shown on table 1 below. They are graded in levels of challenge, and we hope that doctors will allow patients to choose the level and course that they feel is appropriate for them at the time. We hope that they will be allowed to take other courses, and progress at their own pace. We trust that the doctor referring will screen patients who are not fit to take any of our courses. We intend to continue our previous practice of taking clients who self refer and pay the going rate, in addition to patients on doctor referral, by vouchers.
13 Are SECTCo’s course facilitators qualified?
Yes. SECTCo is clinically led by a board of directors of 15 people, most of whom are qualified practicing complementary therapists. They are listed, with brief biographies in appendix 3. They only engage course facilitators and assistant facilitators who they have assessed as adequately trained and qualified to run the courses that we offer. They will have taken the course they are teaching themselves, and they will have been trained to facilitate it. They will also be offered supervision by SECTCo, and be expected to engage in Continuous Professional Development.
(CPD)
Our facilitators’ qualifications are (or will be) shown on our website, www.sectco.org
.
For example, we encourage our MBCT course facilitators to take the Mental Health First Aid course certificates gained from MHFA Foundation. Our intention is to make therapeutic course facilitation a recognized full time career path which is remunerated on a par with other Allied
Health Professions.
14 What emotional support does SECTCo provide to participants? a) Every MBCT course sets up a buddy system, in which participants pair up and share contact addresses and phone numbers, so that they can ask each other for support when needed. b) Our facilitators and assistants give participant their telephone number, with the offer that they can ring them at any time that they need support. c) The ground rules agreed at the start of the MBCT course include that if participants feel emotional distress during a class, they may go to a side room for time out. Every course has at least one assistant facilitator who is instructed to follow them, and give them whatever support is needed.
15 What is the basis of payment for SECTCo courses?
Patients in receipt of vouchers can cash them at any registered venue, in payment for the course when they sign up. The venue would return the ‘used’ vouchers to SECTCo, and would invoice the commissioners. SECTCo would draw down on the grant to pay the facilitator and assistant in arrears, at rates to be agreed in the contract.
The payment rates assumed for this bid are £50 per hour of the course for facilitators and £30 per hour for assistants, and group room hire at £20 per hour. The administrative costs of SECTCo are covered by taking an administration fee as a percentage out of the nominal value of the
48

voucher, which is the price of the course. We intend this percentage to start at 10% and reduce to 5%, as discount for quantity applies.
To be able to pay these rates, we specify a minimum number of participants for a course to go ahead, in the table below. We also specify a maximum number, which is determined by the capacity of the room, or the personal attention that participants should be given to benefit fully from the course.
The grant would therefore only pay for participants who have received the courses, so the money would follow the patient. There would be no payment to SECTCo under any ‘block’ contract arrangement.
16 What if the courses have more than the minimum number?
SECTCo intends that every course advertised would go ahead if the minimum number specified sign up for it. If more than the minimum number sign up for the course, there would be a surplus of funds available, which would go into SECTCo’s reserves. The figures in the table below show the total amount of grant that would be required if the courses offered had the minimum and the maximum number.
We would endeavour to take up all the grant money available, but if it was not all spent by the end of the year, it could go back to the pool, or be carried forward to the next year. SECTCo intends to operate under the basis of ‘open book’ accounting, so that there will be transparency to all, including commissioners, as to where the public money of the grant has gone.
17 How many courses does SECTCo offer to run each year if we get a grant?
We are recruiting and training facilitators as fast as we can, and the following table is the number of courses that we hope to be able to run from April 2013/14 as a service level agreement. They are graded in order of how challenging they are to participants in terms of attention span, emotional issues raised, and interactions between members.
TABLE 1 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT OF COURSES OFFERED IN YEAR 1 (APRIL 2013-
164)
No Course (cs)
Col 1
A EPP
6 weeks
15 hpw
Cs.pa Facilitators Cs/fac Partics
/cs
2 3
100 10
4
10
5
Partics pa
6
5 min 500
10 av
15 max
1500
£/partic £kpa min
7
200
8
100
£kpa max
9
300
B Singing
10 wks
15 hpc
C
D
MBCT
10wks
25hpc
Family C
1 day
100 10
200
100
20
10
10
10
10
13 min 1300
27 av
40 max
4000
7 min 1400
13 av
20 max
4000
7 min 700
13 av
150
400
100
195
600
560
70
1600
49

E
F
8 hpc
Dynamic
3 hpw
13 hpm
EBCT
10 wks
55 hpc
Total
50
50
600
5
5
60
10
10
10
20 max
2000
5 min 250
10 av
15 750 max
5 min 250
10 av
15 750 max
4400 min
13000 max
100
600
25
150
1100
200
75
450
3225
ADDITIONAL
POSSIBILES
G Looking after your back
10 weeks
2.5hpw
25hpc
H Alexander
Technique
10 weeks
2.5 hpw
25hpc
I Shiatsu
10 weeks
2.5 hpw
25hpc
Total
100
100
100
300
10
10
10
30
10
10
10
30
5
10
15
5
10
15
5
10
15
500
1000
1500
500
1000
1500
500
1000
1500
1500
400
400
400
200
200
200
600
600
600
600
3000
4500 1800
18 Course A The Expert Patient Programme (EPP)
John Kapp took this course in Brighton in Sept 2006, It originated in the USA (like the MBCT course) and broke the NHS mould by being facilitated by volunteer service users (rather than qualified clinicians) It was John’s initial inspiration for this bid, so has pride of place in SECTCo’s menu of courses. It has been provided free in the NHS for a decade. The course takes 10-16 participants per course, and in 2011, about 150 participants took 12 courses in Sussex. It is for
2.5 hours per week for 6 weeks (15 hours per course) see www.expertpatients.co.uk
, Locally the manager is Charlotte Stevens, who can be contacted on 01273 295490, charlotte.stevens1@nhs.net
.
19 Course B Singing for health
Singing has been scientifically shown to have profound benefits for health and wellbeing. Scans show that all areas of the brain light up while singing, which is physical evidence for it’s stimulating and energizing effect. If done regularly it improves breathing and mood, relieves depression and isolation, reduces stress, lowers blood pressure and boosts the immune system and confidence.
50

a) Better Breathing Singing (BBS) Group
A weekly group for older people, and those with long term mental and physical health problems.
Our testimonials show that our members are more able to manage their disease, cope better with daily life, increases confidence and social ability. www.singforbetterhealth.co.uk
, Documentary: http://youtu.be/EcxhyJzvvNU
Facilitators registered by 9.7.12: Udita Everitt, (Central Hove and Whitehawk) who has been running these courses for the PCT since 2008. b) Singing For Pleasure (SFP) courses
A weekly group for those who wish to improve their resilience through expression. Led by Simon
Gray, who has 30 years experience in this field. Further information from Robert or Corinne
01273 555089, or Simon Gray simon@firstnight-cabaret.co.uk
.
Facilitators registered by 9.7.12 Simon Gray, (West Hove)
20 Course C The Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course a) What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a way of learning to relate directly to whatever is happening in your life, a way of taking charge of your life, a way of doing something for yourself that no one else can do for you
— consciously and systematically working with your own stress, pain, illness, and the challenges and demands of everyday life. In contrast, you’ve probably encountered moments of
“mindlessness” — a loss of awareness resulting in forgetfulness, separation from self, and a sense of living mechanically. b) What does SECTCo’s MBCT course offer?
The MBCT course is NICE-recommended for depression and anxiety under NICE Clinical
Guidelines (CG) 23 (Dec 2004) and CG123 (May 2011) It is for 2 hours per week for 8 consecutive weeks, 16 hours of tuition in total. However, SECTCo MBCT courses offer 2.5 hours per week (with a 0.5 hour refreshment break to socialise and build peer support) for 10 successive weeks. We also offer an extra taster day before the course starts, so that prospective participants can check that the course is suitable for them. We also offer a reunion day after the course, to gather feedback, and help participants to continue with their meditation practice, and continue the peer support gathered during the course. Further details are given on the MBCT course brochure and other sections of SECTCo website www.sectco.org
.
If there is demand from people who work Monday to Friday, and cannot take off a mid-week morning, we are willing to offer the MBCT course as a weekend intensive, from 6pm Friday to
8pm Sunday. For public sector employers, such as Brighton and Hove City Council, we are willing to offer to run the MBCT course in working hours at the place of work at times to suit the staff. c) Testimonials to the MBCT course
Transport for London with 20,000 staff, offer this course to sick staff, and have found that it reduces staff absence by 73%. See www.transportforlondon.com
Breathworks offer this course to drug and alcohol addicts in Manchester, with remarkably good results. See www.breathworks.co.uk
, contact Gary Hennersey. info@breathworks.co.uk
, 0161 834 1110. A director of the Department of Health NW said at a mental health conference in London in Nov
2011 ‘one of my clients was a drug dealer, who is now assisting me in presenting this course as a remedy’. d) Who facilitates this course for SECTCo?
51

Facilitators registered by 9.7.12: John Kapp (Hove) Heiner Eisenbath (Patcham) Anne Pether
(East Brighton) Paul Davies (Preston Park) Frankie Sidhu ( ) Lotus Nguyen (central Brighton)
Jiva Masheder (East Brighton)
21 Course D Family Constellation days
These are offered from 9am to 5pm, with refreshment breaks. Total 8 hours per course.
Developed by Bert Hellinger, (see www.hellinger.com
) the technique helps participants to see patterns in their family of origin, which give insights which relieve problems. John Kapp has been studying this technique for 8 years, and became a qualified facilitator in 2008. He has been running monthly family constellation days on a drop in basis for the last 4 years.
Facilitators registered by 9.7.12 John Kapp (Hove), Heiner Eisenbath (Patcham),
22 Course E Dynamic meditation
This is done for 1 hour, first thing in the morning, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 730-830am, and from 8-9am on Saturdays, at Revitalise. Total 13 hours per month. It is music and movement, done to a CD. It has a cathartic phase, which empties the emotional garbage can, releasing stuck emotions, and allowing in fresh energy. John Kapp has been facilitating this meditation on a drop-in basis 3 times per week at Revitalise for the last decade. A month’s season ticket costs £20, or on GP referral by voucher.
Facilitators registered by 9.7.12 John Kapp (central Hove)
23 Course F Emotion Based Cognitive Therapy (EBCT) courses
These are for one morning (0730-1300, 5.5 hours) per week for 10 weeks, including 2 refreshment breaks, to socialise, and develop peer support, total 55 hours per course. The course builds on the MBCT course content. It gives three one hour long meditations in each session, to release stuck emotions. For maximum effect, it can be taken concurrently with the MBCT course, on a different day of the week.
Facilitators registered by 9.7.12: John Kapp.
24 Other courses
There are many other therapeutic courses which should be considered to become part of this community mental health programme, including the following: a) ‘Looking after your back’ run by chiropractors who offer NICE-recommended spinal manipulation for low back pain, which accounts for 1 in 3 patients in primary care. Chiropractic
First, Hove, mark_yacoub@hotmail.com
b) Alexander Technique, which is also NICE-recommended for low back pain.
Alexander Technique College, www.alexander-technique-college.com
, Carolyn
Nicholls@btinternet.com
, c) Shiatsu, which is needle-less acupuncture, which is also NICE-recommended for low back pain.
Brighton Shiatsu College, Debbie Collins, brighton@shiatsucollege.co.uk
d) Martial arts, which have been scientifically shown to reduce domestic violence in Hull.
( www.whitecranemartialarts.co.uk
) e) ‘Take control of your life’, www.paulcburr.com
, doctapaul@paulcburr.com
52

f) Disease-specific courses which, such as Living Well with Cancer, run by the Penny Brohn centre (formerly the Bristol Cancer Help Centre) www.pennybrohn.org
, Georgia.diebel@pennybrohn.org
.
SECTCo would be pleased to engage with potential providers of therapeutic courses, to increase the variety of choice of available to patients and their GPs.
25 What will the outcome be on public health of these SECTCo courses?
We believe that the above courses are clinically appropriate specifically for the 30,000 people in the city who are stated to have anxiety and depression (Prospectus, p11) and an equal number of people with low back pain. Some patients might need to repeat a course several times.
SECTCo wishes to progressively meet all the potential demand, so in the second year, (2014/15) we offer to double the number of courses, and in the third year, (2015/16) to double that number again, as shown in the table 2:
TABLE 2 PATIENTS TREATED, AND COSTS INCURRED IN EACH OF THE 3 YEARS
Cost to the commissioner £ mpa Year Number of courses pa
2013/14 600
2014/15 1,200
Number of participants treated pa
4,400-13,000
8,800-26,000
1.1-3.2
2.2-6.4
2015/16 2,400 17,600- 46,000 4.4-12.8
26 But there isn’t enough money in the Community Mental Health budget for this.
We are well aware that the total budget for this Community Mental Health Prospectus is only
£1.8 mpa, which is insufficient to cover this bid. Previously under this programme, there were 33 contracts let for a total of £2.3 mpa, and none of these contracts were for courses. Accordingly, our bid may appear inappropriate to the panel of adjudicators.
Anticipating this, we wrote on 22.6.12 (see appendix 2) to the chairman of the city Clinical
Commissioning Group, Dr Xavier Nalletamby requesting that the new (1.6.12) Wellbeing Service issue an invitation to bid to a similar Prospectus, funded from the city’s NHS mental health budget, which is about £55 mpa.
We hope that the Wellbeing Service will do this, and that they will consider this bid as an application for that bigger budget. All the 30,000 patients (and more) want effective interventions, and do not care from which budget they come. By the third year, if our proposal is accepted, each depressed patient could have one course each year, for a budget of £13 mpa.
This is only about 20% of the NHS mental health budget, which is £55 mpa, out of a total NHS budget for the city of £500 mpa.
We believe that our courses meet all the QIPP standards (Quality, Safety, Effectiveness, Patient
Experience, Innovation, Prevention and Productivity) By taking them, participants learn how to look after themselves better, and so avert hospital admissions, crimes, and other public sector interventions, which would cost much more than £13 mpa. The public money spent in commissioning SECTCo courses would therefore be well spent.
27 How would the cost-effectiveness of our courses be monitored?
We intend to issue questionnaires to all participants, before and after the courses, and analyse the results. SECTCo will include the results in our annual report. We also invite university
53

researchers to monitor our participants, and report, so that they can give an independent opinion. An example is given in appendix 5.
We will also monitor the annual public health statistics. We believe that if everyone who needs our courses was able to access them, the public health statistics could be halved in 5 years. This outcome is evaluated in our business plan, see www.sectco.org, section 1f.
28 Conclusion. Please commission this mental health support programme
2 years ago (in June 2010) the Director of Public Health, Brighton and Hove, (Dr Tom Scanlon) addressed a meeting of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HOSC) in the presence the chairman of the shadow CCG (Dr Xavier Nalletamy) and the director of commissioning (Dr
Geraldine Hoban) on the subject of Community Resilience in the city. He said:
‘Vulnerabilities include poor secondary school performance, poor quality housing, less stable families, problems of alcohol, tobacco and substance misuse, relatively high crime rates, and low satisfaction with public services.
Assets include a highly educated population, a thriving economy, strong partnership working with a strong third sector, and a local population generally keen to volunteer, design and deliver solutions.
The challenge in these particular times is for the statutory, business and third sectors to work better with each other and with the local community to harness the strengths and assets in a creative way to tackle our collective vulnerabilities.’
SECTCo is offering the NHS and the Council a new service to address these challenges under the heading of this bid: Community Mental Health programme. It comprises a menu of evidencebased, therapeutic courses which meets all these requirements to the QIPP standards of quality, safety, cost-effectiveness, good patient experience, Innovative, Preventative, and Productivity.
SECTCo hopes that the commissioners in Brighton and Hove will negotiate a contract with us to provide this programme to improve mental health, and reduce inequalities in the city. We also hope that this scheme will be a pilot scheme, and that it will be replicated throughout the country.
1 Brighton and Hove Commissioning Prospectus, May 2012, Funding opportunities to support local communities. Promoting independence, partnership working, innovation and creativity, social capital, health and wellbeing, collaboration. Issued jointly between the NHS and
Brighton and Hove City Council. It is 38 pages, and is published on www.businessportal.southeastiep.gov.uk
, opportunities/ brighton and hove, Brighton and Hove
Commissioning Prospectus. The key dates are: Publication: 15.5.12; 21.5.-8.6 briefing meetings to clarify objectives (SECTCo attended on 31.5.12) 27.7.12 2pm, deadline for applications,
24.8.12 Clarification and negotiation meetings completed. 14.9.12 2pm, amended application received. 1.11.12 Funding agreements awarded. 1.4.13 Funding agreement start date.
2 ‘NHS failing mental patients’ London School of Economics report, by Lord Layard et al, reported 18.6.12 in the media. ‘3/4 million people do not have access to treatments which could improve their lives and save £bns every year.’
3 SECTCo’s letter to Dr Xavier Nalletamby, chairman of the Brighton and Hove Clinical
Commissioning Group (CCG) dated 22.6.12, see www.sectco.org
, see appendix 2.
54

4 ‘Alcohol admissions up.’ News item published in the Evening Argus on 14.7.12, page 2.
5 Evening Argus report, 13.7.12, p11, ‘Depression an issue for elderly.
20.2.13
Mission ‘Give a man pills and you mask his symptoms for a day.
Teach him meditation and he can heal himself for life.’
(Misquoting Ghandi)
1 Why learn to meditate? a) To maintain or improve mental health, we need to become resilient against life events that get us down, (such as losing our job, losing loved ones, falling sick, accidents, etc) Meditation is a self-help tool to improve resilience, so has been practiced in most cultures for millennia. It has recently been scientifically shown to deliver improved mental health and wellbeing. b) Animals and small children meditate naturally, but most adults have forgotten how. Meditation courses give participants the techniques of how to be in the
‘here and now’ (in our body in the present moment) rather than in our usual state of being in our mind in the past or the future, which can make us sick. c) Our courses postulate that people have 3 parts: body, mind and soul (spirit) Our body is matter (particles) Our mind and soul are non-material (waves) in our aura. Our body and mind are interconnected, like two sides of the same coin, so we call them ‘mindbody’, (psychosomatic) In meditation, our soul (higher self, consciousness, third eye) watches them, as shown in the diagram. d) Sickness is disharmony (even a war zone) between body and mind. We can harmonise (and heal) ourselves by seeing the disharmony, and changing our attitudes, using techniques from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. (CBT). We can look at, and enter our mindbody through either door: mind side (mindfulness, taught in the MBCT course), or body side (expressing emotions, taught in the EBCT course)
PSYCHO SOMATIC
MIND BODY
DOOR DOOR
M
MBCT EBCT
55

e) What the mind suppresses (emotions), the body expresses (as symptoms) When we express our repressed emotions in meditative (watched) catharsis in the EBCT course, we can eliminate our symptoms (heal and cure)
2 The Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course is National Institute for
Clinical Excellence (NICE)-recommended (CG 23, 2004, CG123, 2011) as clinically appropriate for depression and other long term conditions. It is basically group CBT with meditation. The NICE specification is for 16 hours of tuition, usually given as 8 weekly sessions of 2 hours. SECTCo offer it for 2.5 hours per week with a break, plus a taster session before, and a reunion after, total 10 weeks. It is about a quarter experiential, and three quarters explanation of how the method works.
The course is based on the technique of watching our breath, as promoted in India by the
Buddha 2,500 years ago, known as ‘vipassana’ in Sanscrit, and ‘mindfulness’ in English. This course uses the version developed since 1979 for the contemporary person by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn, and requires no religious belief. We enter our bodymind through our mind (mental body of air) using thoughts and words, from what is called in meditation circles as the ‘path of awareness’.
3 The Emotion Based Cognitive Therapy (EBCT) course is the counterpart to the MBCT course, and can be taken concurrently on a different day of the week. We enter our bodymind through our body (emotional body of water) using movement to music (rather than thoughts and words), based on what is called the ‘path of love’. These techniques originated in India perhaps 5 millenia ago, and are associated with Chrishna. They were subsequently developed by Zen masters and Sufis. This course uses versions developed since 1973 for the contemporary person and requires no religious belief. We enter our mindbody through our body (emotional body of water) using thoughts and words, from what is called in meditation circles as the ‘path of love’.
Healing requires that we give our body love from the EBCT course, and awareness from the
MBCT course. They are like 2 wings by which we can fly.
The EBCT course is 4 hours per week of tuition (5.5 hours per week with breaks) for 8+2=10 weeks. It is about three quarters experiential, and a quarter explanation of how the methods work. It is a ‘sandwich’ course, sandwiching the 2 hour EBCT course between dynamic and kundalini meditations, as shown diagrammatically below.
THE EBCT SANDWICH COURSE
Bread 1: Dynamic meditation from path of love (emotion 1 hour to music) musicmusic)
Meat: The EBCT course (other meditations from the path of love)
Bread 2: Kundalini meditation from path of love (emotion 1 hour to music)
4 The MBCT sandwich course, is a hybrid course, combining parts of the two above courses
2 and 3. It is 4 hours per week of tuition (5.5 hours with breaks) for 8+2=10 weeks. This is shown diagrammatically below. It sandwiches the ‘meat’ of the standard MBCT course (shown in yellow) between two ‘bread’ meditations - dynamic and kundalini meditations, (shown in red) from the path of love. You benefit from the experience of these meditations, but there is not time to explain how the meditations work, which is given in the EBCT course.
56

THE MBCT SANDWICH COURSE
Bread 1: Dynamic meditation from path of love (emotion,1 hour to music)
Meat: The MBCT course from path of awareness
Bread 2: Kundalini meditation from path of love (emotion 1 hour to music)
5 Facilitator training courses People who wish to become SECTCo course facilitators are welcome to train with us on any of our courses, and should attend as assistant facilitators. The entry qualification is to have done the course with SECTCo, or with another organisation, or have equivalent meditation experience. The standard SECTCo lesson plan will be followed according to the course book, under the supervision of the facilitator. Facilitators under tuition will be given opportunities to lead sections, giving them practice and confidence in leading a class.
6 Class We meet together as a class of between 5 and 15 participants with a qualified facilitator and at least 1 assistant facilitator. A taster session is provided one week before the course starts for you to meet the facilitators, and to check that the course is appropriate for you. A reunion is held after the course, to get feedback, and help you to continue your meditation practice and access peer support.
7 For whom are these courses? Anybody who wants to improve their resilience, health and wellbeing. The cause of sickness is lack of awareness of how our stressful lifestyle is harming our health. These courses help you to heal yourself by learning meditation, which increases awareness, and gives understanding, and tools by which we can improve our own health.
8 Contra-indications. There are no specific contra-indications for these courses, which are not
‘interventions’ in the medical sense. However, you should be fit enough to get to the group room, and have an attention span of an hour to receive the course content. We will be discussing emotional issues which we usually avoid because we fear that they may be painful (skeletons in our cupboard). Some strength and courage is needed to open the cupboard and look squarely at what is inside. If we do, we find that our fears were groundless, and we are healed of that issue as a result.
9 Are you ready for a meditation course? Yes, of course you are, but if you have doubts, please write them down beforehand on a piece of paper, and give it to the facilitator at the taster day, who will discuss whether or not you should enrol now.
10 What will be expected of me? No pressure will be put on you to perform to any standard, and you will not be marked or judged in any way. However, you will be expected to:
> Attend each class, or phone the facilitator beforehand to say why you are not coming.
> Share with one other in the class how you are now, how you are getting on with the
homework, and other similar questions.
> Do the homework for an hour per day between classes by reading the session in the
course book provided, and practicing meditation to the CD and recording your
experience in your course book.
11 Outcome You will be taught to:
> Watch what is going on in your mind and body.
57

> Notice your habits of being judgemental, driving yourself to meet impossible goals,
and beating yourself up.
> Release yourself from those habits if you want to.
> Change your attitude of wishing things were different.
> Accept yourself as you are, rather than judging yourself inadequate.
> Appreciate yourself, others and your environment more.
> Be present and centred so that you go more with the flow of life.
> Find more resilience, contentment, peace, harmony and love in your life.
12 Testimonial to meditation
In a recently published book about meditation, titled: ‘Teach Us to Sit Still – A Sceptics Search for Health and Healing’‘, Tim Parks says: ‘Just when I seemed to be walled up in a life sentence of chronic pain, someone proposed a bizarre way out; sit still, they said, and breathe. I sat still, I breathed. It seemed a tedious exercise at first, rather painful, not immediately effective.
Eventually it proved so exciting, so transforming, mentally and physically, that I began to think my illness had been a stroke of luck. If I wasn’t the greatest of sceptics, I’d be saying that it had been sent from above to invite me to change my ways.’
13 SECTCo meditation courses programme
Course No Start – Finish Reunion Time Venue
MBCT
EBCT
Dynamic meditation
7 Thurs 21.3.13
3 Tues 19.3.13 @
Every Tues, and Thurs
Every Sat, drop in
30.5.13
28.5.13
0930-1200 *
0730-0830 @
0930-1300 @
730-830am
8-9am
Shop
Revitalise (RV)
Shop
RV
Kundalini meditation
Family constellation
Every Tues, drop in
4 th Sunday of each month, drop in
6-7pm (phone
417997)
1000-1700
22, Saxon Rd
Shop
*You are welcome to do the MBCT course as an enhanced sandwich course, starting with dynamic meditation from 730-830am (in Pineapple room in the basement of Revitalise, accessed by the back door) and finishing with kundalini meditation from 12-1pm.
@ Unlike the MBCT course, the EBCT course is a drop-in which you can pick and mix sessions, as we do not have to cover a NICE-recommended syllabus.
14 By whom are these courses run?
By Social Enterprise Complementary Therapy Company (SECTCo) www.sectco.org
of 22, Saxon Rd Hove BN3 4LE 01273 417997. They were designed by John Kapp, with help from the directors and associates of SECTCo. His credentials are shown in the company website. He can be contacted at johnkapp@btinternet.com
.
58

15
16
17
18
19
11
12
13
14
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
TABLE 2 HALVING OF CITY’S PUBLIC HEALTH STATISTICS BY 2020
Target number
1
Statistical number of people pa affected in city 2009
Deaths from all causes pa 3,000
2020 (50% of
2009)
3,000
2
3
200
5,000
100
2,500
Iatrogenis (doctor induced) deaths (note 1)
Hospitalisation from iatrogenesis (ADRs) (note
2)
Deaths from suicide pa
Drug users
Alcoholics
Obese
Clinically depressed
Smokers
Long term conditions
Teenage pregnancies
On disability benefit (2.5 m nationally)
Hospital admissions
GP contacts (300m nationally)
Deaths in preferred place (home)
No of patients dying with living wills
Dementia patients killed by drugs (note 3)
Public sector staff off sick (note 4)
Prescriptions written (note 5)
36
2,250
50,000
60,000
15,000
50,000
40,000
18
1,125
25,000
30,000
7,500
25,000
20,000
40,000
12,500
200,000
1,500,000
20,000
6,250
100,000
750,000
750
Hardly any
9
1,200
1,500
1,500
4
600
5 million 2.5 million
Notes to table 2
1 Assuming 40,000 deaths pa nationally (Panorama programme Nov 2000)
2 Nationally 1 million people were hospitalised by ADRs in 2011
3 Banajee report 2009, 1,800 deaths pa nationally
4 Assuming 30,000 public sector staff with average sickness rate of 4%.
5 Nationally 936 million monthly prescriptions were written in 2011.
If we win the contract we will develop this table, taking into account the Department of Health
(taken from SECTCo’s business plan written in 2011, and in need of revision)
59

.
Return to Content Page
60