Personal Medicine

Personal Medicine

Personal medicine is non-pharmaceutical self-care activities initiated by an individual that lowers the symptoms, improve behaviours, thoughts, moods, and avoid undesirable results like hospitalization (Deegan, 2005). Personal medicine helps in reduction of addiction in different ways.  Personal strategies and non-pharmaceutical activities lowers the symptoms and enhance health and wellness. For example, solving mathematics enabled a client diagnosed with bipolar disease to stabilize her moods. Personal medicine self-care strategies such as helping others formally or informally enables the individuals to avoid different types of stress such as anxiety.

Personal medicine is subdivided into two categories, personal meaning as the purpose of life and self-care strategies. For the activities that give life a meaning, the examples include solving mathematics, assisting other individuals and singing. Examples of personal medicine under self-care strategies include having a good cry, changing diet, shopping, doing math, being in nature, being alone, being with other people, exposure to sunlight, collecting dolls, pushing individual self to achieve, taking a day off, going for ride and talking on the phone (Deegan, 2005). Other types of personalized medicine include fishing, sex, spending time with family and friends, participating in advocacy, exercising and keeping busy. All these strategies alleviate different forms of distress such as depression and anxiety.

One personal medicine can work for one individual and might not work for other people. Individuals have different hormonal levels, poor metabolism and predispositions affecting how each person reacts to exercises. For example, some individuals may have low responders to exercises while others may have high responders. Low responders ought to work extra hard to attain the results. Other factors such as medical history, age and prior personal medical strategies are the key reasons why personalized medicine is individualized.

Reference

Deegan, P. E. (2005). The importance of personal medicine: A qualitative study of resilience in people with psychiatric disabilities. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 33(66_suppl), 29-35.