A noted surgeon here with more than two decades of experience in practicing surgery, teaching, healthcare and hospital management, Dr Mahesh Bhatt has authored a book ‘Spiritual Health’ which focuses on understanding the interactions involving spirituality, religion, science, health and human thought processes.
He says, “Taking surgery as the area of my specialisation and practicing it, increases my direct interaction with the patients from different beliefs, socio-cultural and educational backgrounds.
The most annoying experience during early days of my practice as a surgeon about 22 years back, used to be when relatives and patients asked to do some rituals before a gallbladder surgery. Amazingly, it was equally right in case of educated patients with higher degrees in the field of science and technology. But later, I became comfortable with these ideas, and I started inquiring about this. I found nothing wrong with allowing it- in fact I found it useful in post-surgical period in recovery of the patient.
As surgeons, we face many incidences in our professional career which appeared bizarre to us, some times they may create a significant humour, at times they are annoying and at times they are just amazing but most of the time they help in deciding our treatment strategies by understanding the underlying personality and beliefs of our patients.”
Regarding the book he says that the idea to write a book on spiritual health and the science behind it came to his mind in 2012 while he was attending the annual conference of the association of surgeons of India. This is really a fantastic book from a surgeon’s side and it shows spiritual aspect of treatment and this fact can never be removed.
“The recent extremist behavior among the people based on religions, politics, cultures, social and sectarian reasons resulting into human crisis globally at all levels pushed me one step ahead to write this book.
Since I am dealing with the health of people, my thought process naturally revolved around the concept of health and its spiritual dimensions.
So, the idea to a write book on spirituality and health turned into writing this book on ‘Spiritual Health’.
The book contains 30 chapters on various aspects ranging from an overview of health, biology and thought processes to the aspects of spirituality and their connection to mental health, social health, mysticism and value of spiritual health in medical treatment.