ICEERS
International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research & Service
A society has emerged in which worldwide 450 million people suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder, which translates to an estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — and approximately 11 percent of the population in the Europe.. According to the WHO by 2030 depression will be the most important health problem in first world countries, only preceded by AIDS and prenatal death in third world countries More than 200 million people worldwide have a drug dependence, which in the US alone carried an economical price tag of $246 billion in 1992. Beyond these statistics lay the quiet suffering of millions, perhaps even the majority of our society, who live under the radar of official, medical prognoses; those with unresolved trauma, damaged self esteem, unhealthy relationships, social anxiety and a vast spectrum of neuroses accumulated through personal history. Each of these factors has the capacity to generate a host of emotional distresses, self-limiting defense mechanisms and self-destructive behaviors, all of which stand as an obstacle to personal growth and well being.
These mental and behavioral problems stretch beyond the individual and slowly tear at the fabric of society’s primary support structure: The family. While we all bear witness to the gradual breakdown of relationships amongst friends, neighbors and family members, we also see the toll these pressures extend to the communities in which we live. As individuals retreat into their own, isolated “bubbles” of electronic sound bites incidents of road-rage, school shootings, domestic violence continue to rise at an unprecedented rate. In response to these factors, our towns’, our cities’ social resources, public health services, education, economy and labor markets all suffer under the weight of this swiftly growing epidemic of disorder.
In this fast-food, throw-away world, society has fallen prey to the “quick-fix” approach to every dilemma, both big and small. This has led to the convenient belief that all psychological conditions we are currently facing stem from a concrete, neurobiological or genetic origin. The attractiveness of this practice is the promise of a quick and easy solution.
Personal responsibility for one’s condition is now a thing of the past as our health care systems would have us believe that genetics, brain malfunctions or chemical imbalances are the primary sources of such disorders. The race to drown complex symptoms under a barrage of labels (ADHD, borderline personality and eating disorders) evokes the illusion that these are isolated syndromes, problems in and of themselves that can, and should, be merely suppressed.
This brings us to the major shortcomings of a purely medical approach that lacks the tools and resources to address these complex, multilayered problems at their root.
In addition to the medical industry’s difficulty to effectively address these obstacles to personal growth, the therapeutic model is one that often requires years of dedication and patience before any visible progress can be made. For example, it is estimated that therapeutic interventions for alcoholism offer little more hope than a 20 percent success rate, among which nearly 80 percent fall to relapse within 2 years time. In our fast paced society, this poses an obvious dilemma to the newer generations who demand effective, immediate solutions. It is imperative that new strategies of intervention are applied to detect and heal the recurrent psycho-social problems we face today.
Beyond the ever growing need for efficient strategies in psycho-social problem solving, family and social structures would greatly benefit from effective methods for maximizing personal and career growth in ‘healthy’ individuals. Existing disciplines show to be only available to a limited amount of people and not suitable to catalyze the growth process on all levels — mental, emotional, physical, behavioral, social and spiritual. The interrelation of all these levels, each level participatory and interactive with others, demand methods that are designed as such.
We can no longer comfortably ignore humanity’s snowballing array of malfunctions as our lack of awareness progressively threatens the very planet which supports us. Never before have our resources been so carelessly disregarded; from the pollution in the water we drink, the toxins in the air we breathe, to the systematic destruction of our rainforests. And the forecasts for our near future offer even less comfort. And in the process of trampling over our natural resources, the ones who are most currently affected are the indigenous peoples of the rainforests, in the Amazon and elsewhere.
Along with the millions of native lives that are threatened, our assault on their lands is slowly annihilating thousands of years of ethnobotanical knowledge and practice as well as delicate, botanical resources. Over eighty percent of our pharmaceuticals originated from the very lands we are plowing over today. With every new species of plant we trample into extinction, we may very well be destroying potential solutions for the world’s growing list of incurable diseases.