Dr. Gabor Maté, the renowned author on addictions, last week told more than 100 UW health-sciences students that the educational framework they are being taught is woefully inadequate because it separates the mind from the body.
“For all the medical students, how many are taking courses on brain development?”
Only a handful of  med students were in the room. None had an answer.
For Maté, author of “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction,” how our brains are affected by relationships, stress and trauma – from the earliest of ages -- has everything to do with the development of a host of addictions. Health, he said, is a psychological issue as much as physical issue.
“The medical profession is trauma-phobic,” he told the emerging healthcare professionals, urging them to get a broader perspective on their patients' histories.
His best-selling book on addictions was chosen as the common book for all health sciences students in the current year. Maté spent more than 20 years in family practice, including as a palliative care physician and working in Vancouver with patients challenged by hardcore drug addictions, mental illness and HIV. Working with addicts for 12 years made him passionate about developing compassion for people suffering from a range of addictions.
Maté’s visit was sponsored by UW Health Sciences Schools and the Health Equity Circle, an interdisciplinary organization of UW  students and community members who believe that health includes complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Kristen Hansen Day, a second-year medical student and a leader with the Health Equity Circle, said Maté’s perspective pushed students to think beyond genetic determinism as the reason for disease and addiction.
"As he said, you can't separate the mind from the body and you can't separate the person from the environment. His perspective promotes health equity because it compels health care providers to look around at the society they live in and advocate for changes that will prevent oppression, incarceration, violence, trauma, neglect -- all the things that affect people's brain development and lead to addiction and disease," said Hansen Day.

For more on Dr. Mate's visit to UW, please click here for more information.