We all love simple solutions. Human beings have such strong urges to understand. We are driven to try and make sense of our experiences and our lives. It could be argued that this drive is a significant factor in human survival and development. It’s a good thing to try to understand. What’s not appreciated so much is the value of doubt. Whilst it’s good to understand, it’s the belief that we never completely understand anything that drives our continual growth. Without doubt, thought stops, reflection ceases and learning hits the buffers.
I’m not arguing for obfuscation. I do like clarity. But the reality is that we are complex creatures living complex lives. Health and illness cannot be reduced to simple formulae or single causal factors. It’s for these reasons that I find myself so impressed with the recent work from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health which has just published an interesting piece of research.
They have studied 20 European regions to make comparisons with the experience of the West of Scotland. The regions they studied were similar to the West of Scotland in terms of de-industrialisation, deprivation and poverty. What’s happened over the course of the second half of the twentieth century is that the West of Scotland has fallen behind all the other regions. Life expectancy figures and a whole bank of illness and health measures have shown all the other regions are improving faster than the West of Scotland.
There’s a common and fairly simplistic view that deprivation is the main cause of ill health, but deprivation cannot explain the differences between the West of Scotland and other similar regions. That’s the somewhat startling conclusion of this study. If deprivation cannot explain it, then what is the explanation? I’m impressed that the Centre for Population Studies has explored a number of possible explanations but hasn’t found any of them to be satisfactory. However, complex causes such as income inequality (it’s been repeatedly shown that the greater the income inequality within a community, the poorer the health experience at any discrete level of wealth), migration and the speed of change (de-industrialisation), are probably all significant, whilst, simple explanations such as absolute deprivation scores, cigarette and alcohol consumption, and so on, cannot explain the differences.
Health is a complex phenomenon and this kind of adult, intelligent research is just what we need.
Heroes Not Zombies 
I think your point that we are complex creatures leading complex lives is an important one. SO many things factor into our overall well-being (or not). It staggers my imagination to think of the things that impact my own health, and I’m actually living my life – no one is more intimate with it than I – yet I can’t begin to understand it all…
It seems to be one of the purposes of life, doesn’t it, mrschili? Knowing that you don’t understand it all, and continuing to enquire and to learn, is the key, don’t you think? Understanding, after all, is a process, not a destination.