Narrative Medicine:The Power of Story in Sickness and Health

Q&A with Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona

by Lorrie Klosterman and illustrations by Annie Internicola, April 30, 2009

Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, MPhil, has studied indigenous doctoring with traditional North American healers for over 30 years and incorporates these approaches in his medical practice, and in workshops in which he guides others to explore indigenous methods and perspectives. In his books Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, Coyote Wisdom, Narrative Medicine, and the upcoming Narrative Psychiatry (slated for July publication), Dr. Mehl-Madrona describes and supports, with impressive rigor, the importance of a person’s whole life story to their health—not just the medical history, but a story that includes ancestors and friends, interests and spiritual orientation, and myriad other influences including unseen relationships in the purview of quantum physics.

A graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine, the Psychological Studies Institute in Palo Alto, California, and Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand, Dr. Mehl-Madrona first perceived the need for a parallel path to biomedicine in 1973, when, in medical school, a professor asserted that “life was a relentless progression toward death, disease, and decay. The physician’s job is to slow the rate of decline.” Mehl-Madrona quickly found a Cherokee healer with whom to study, and has continued learning from indigenous elders ever since.

“It’s not too late to acknowledge the merit of indigenous perspectives for the modern world,” Mehl-Madrona says in Narrative Medicine. “In the indigenous worldview, for example, each person is the sum of all the stories that have ever been (or ever will be) told about him; the idea that our identity is formed from telling ourselves these stories leads us to realize that each person is unique and must be approached individually to discover how he will heal.” As a doctor, Mehl-Madrona helps patients discover their own stories of illness, and create ones of healing to pull them forward to recovery. He may also recount stories he has learned from the patient’s ancestral heritage that parallel his patient’s struggles. Through metaphor, these stories help create a context of hope and a path to wellness—features that often are lacking from the “story” patients get from mainstream medicine based on statistics and life expectancy tables.

Dr. Mehl-Madrona also encourages and teaches ceremonies, based on indigenous practices, to immerse the patient in a culture of community and spiritual support for healing. Again from Narrative Medicine, “Ceremony is an important part of how I work to help people transcend limitations. Like healing, ceremony should be seen as a verb that submits us to a process of transformation, and not something that has efficacy in the way of a drug or a surgery. Ceremony provides the context from which we dialog with the Universe, with angels, spirits, ancestors, and the Divine. It guides us into the work of the soul and its healing—providing a road for personal and spiritual transformation as well as community revitalization. Ceremony gives us a path to follow away from our limitations.”