Published: June 2021, Issue 39


Keywords:
Holistic medicine Solidarity Social Medical Center. Health team, incomer, non-expert, other medicine.

The Team for the Other Medicine, Solidarity Social Clinic of Thessaloniki

Vosniadou Tania - psychologist - psychotherapist, DA - musician, Efthymiadis Vangelis - General Practitioner, Kavaka Niki - Reflexologist - Physiotherapist, Kokkali Maria - Dentist, Margariti Margarita - Dentist, Yiota Babatzimopoulou - Political Theory, Bella Eleni - Sports Doctor - Orthopedist, Politis Kleomenis - General Practitioner, Raptis Giannis - General Practitioner, Sotiriou Georgia

Instead of an ABSTRACT, the Introductory information to the participants in the corresponding workshop is presented.

The suspended step of the “Other Medicine”

The video features the online Workshop that took place during Metalogos Day-Event 2021.

The team for the Other Medicine is an open working group of the Solidarity Social Clinic of Thessaloniki (SSMC). The SSMC is a self-organised structure that provides free primary care for people who are unable to cover physical, mental, dental health issues and/or are excluded from the state health system. Its official operation started at the end of 2011 and is based on the voluntary solidarity offer of the people involved. Decisions on its operation are taken at the assemblies of sectors (Pathological, Pediatric, Psychiatric, etc.) and the General Assembly. The number of volunteers ranges from 100 to 250 people, most of them non-health professionals. SSMC is associated with a large number of laboratories, private practices and hospital doctors, which provide free medical services. At the same time, more than 300 pharmacies in various neighbourhoods collect drugs for its needs. It relies financially on donations and events it organises and is independent of state institutions, municipalities, the church, political parties and businesses.

The team for the Other Medicine was created in 2013 to develop practices and methods that are in line with the philosophy of SSMC and propose the direct connection with society, the avoidance of any type of commercialisation, the anti-hierarchy, and express the desire to activate the incomers and overturn the passivity of the people that characterises the practice of Medicine. The term incomer has been chosen by the members of SSMC instead of the term patients.

The Group hopes that this workshop will be an opportunity to share its action, fruitful reflection and reflection on what it has achieved, what it has not achieved, what it has thought but not attempted. Its basic principle is the view of man as a mutually defining unit of mental-physical-social. To be "healthy" must be related harmoniously, creatively and freely within the community. The conditions of the pandemic today, with which we all face daily, have brought to the surface the importance of connecting the mental with the physical and the social and could make the philosophy of the Other Medicine a starting point for a deeper discussion around Medicine that will put at the centre of its action the human being as a whole embedded in a specific socio-political environment.

The endeavour of the Group to present its path so far, its way of thinking and operating as well as examples of its work, seems simple. However, given the Group's mode of operation, it takes effort to fit memories, actions, practices, emotions, terminology and ruptures into a presentation about the collective efforts of different people trying to achieve a common goal. This goal in concentrated terms is to take the "mental-physical-social" unity seriously in medical practice.

In this workshop, first of all, there will be a reference to the Group's discussions on models of Medicine (of disease, of health, of damage), on the critique of Western Medicine reference on other approaches such as homoeopathy, Chinese Medicine, acupuncture, Balint groups and the Open Dialogue.

Next, there will be a reference to the training in the family genogram and the various groups created to apply in practice a holistic and non-hierarchical approach: the diabetes group, the reception group, the therapeutic exercise group, the joint physician-psychotherapist sessions. A special report will be made at the Workers Clinic at the self-managed factory of VIOME.

Then, the description will follow: a) of the health team consisting of a general practitioner, a psychotherapist and member of the SSMC non-health- professional, b) of the health card, as a guide in the physical-mental-social connection to capture the "Hologram" of the incomer and c) the procedure of the session. Also, clinical examples will be mentioned as well as some of the Group's concerns regarding the dynamics of the session and the dynamics between its members. Finally, an incomer will talk about her experience and her relationship with the Other Medicine Team.

Relevant material

The website of SSMC for more information:

http://www.kiathess.gr/gr/poioi-eimaste/diakiriksi-kia.

Film for SSMC : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5zOR1hDRaY

Practice inspired by the Other Medicine (book): Casie Thornton, 2020. The Hologram, Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, London: Pluto Press, https://www.plutobooks.com / 9780745343327 / the-hologram /

Article on Social Clinic and Other Medicine: Kokkinidis G, Checchi M. Power matters: Posthuman entanglements in a social solidarity clinic. Organisation. January 2021. doi: 10.1177 / 1350508420973304