Have you ever heard of "Pink Medicine"? I had not heard of it either until I came upon a really interesting article that explained just what the philosophy and main goals of pink medicine is. As defined by the article, Pink Medicine is "an intuitive, collaborative, heart-centered, empowering, feminine way to approach an expanded definition of health that includes not just physical and mental health, but also interpersonal, emotional, spiritual, sexual, professional, environmental, and financial health, all of which profoundly affect the health of the body" (source).
Pink Medicine really has a lot to do with valuing yourself as an individual. If you were, for instance, diagnosed with a severely debilitating illness or injury, Pink Medicine would encourage you to believe that you are worth both the fight of keeping you alive and restoring your good health. A main facet to Pink Medicine is believing that your body can help restore itself. This is not to say that physicians who practice Pink Medicine do not use the most up to date forms of treatment, it simply means that a patient believes that their body will react well to the treatment and that they will get better.
A great deal of what Pink Medicine is based on is related to Psychology. Essentially, Pink Medicine helps prevent patients from developing "learned helplessness". Learned helplessness is a concept in psychology that occurs when an individual loses hope and sees no options for making something better or ameliorating their pain. If an individual was diagnosed with a terminal illness, it would be very easy to fall into the learned helplessness way of thinking. It is difficult to hold onto hope when faced with a tragic diagnosis. Learned helplessness is also related to depression. Depression in individuals with severe illnesses, such as cancer and AIDS, is very common and may have detrimental effects on how a patient reacts to a treatment.
Patients who practice Pink Medicine do not believe that doctors can simply rectify their problems. They are not looking for a quick fix, rather they are developing a spiritual plan that will assist them in the troubling days ahead of them. Essentially, patients take control of their healing process since they are the sole proprietor of their own body.
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