Afbeelding
What exactly will you be working on?
,,I am committed to connecting research, education and practice in addiction care with the aim of promoting health. Lifestyle, the way people organise their lives, affects both your physical and psychological health. An unhealthy lifestyle can lead to addiction, but an addiction can also lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. I want to focus on developing and researching tools and processes that contribute to health behaviour and addiction prevention.'’
What specifically should we think about?
“One of the projects we are working on is removing the hesitation of healthcare professionals in the field of lifestyle. Many health professionals feel insecure about their knowledge and skills in this area. They find it difficult to start a conversation about an unhealthy lifestyle, to say that someone is overweight or has an unhealthy diet. We want to explore what is needed in terms of knowledge and skills to lower this threshold.''
Your appointment is in line with the ‘Coalitie Leefstijl in de Zorg’ (Lifestyle Coalition in Healthcare) programme, which was recently launched by Dutch Health Minister Ernst Kuipers.
"Its mission is that lifestyle should be an integral part of mainstream healthcare by 2025, so that lifestyle interventions can be used effectively to prevent and treat health problems and diseases. This is quite an ambitious goal, because someone's lifestyle is not yet part of mainstream healthcare practice. Why not? The scientific evidence that healthy living can prevent diseases has not yet been sufficiently accepted. It also has to do with lack of time among healthcare workers and too little knowledge and skills. I intend to do something about the latter.''
You think lifestyle should be much more on the agenda in society.
"Yes, we are talking a lot about it. But the low VAT for fruit and vegetables has hardly had any impact, while fast-food restaurants are still popping up like mushrooms. And drinking alcohol is fully accepted in our society, while many Dutch people do not know that it can cause cancer, for instance. In other words, there is still much unawareness about what makes a healthy lifestyle. Ultimately, the key to living healthier is in one's environment, in society. Iceland's drug prevention model teaches us that community building is crucial. That country once had the highest rate of drug use among young people in all of Europe, but thanks to parental and community participation and the use of free sports and games activities, alcohol and drug use has dropped significantly.''
We also need to take a different view of addiction, in your opinion.
"Yes, we used to think: putting an end to addiction is a matter of willpower and perseverance. The first addiction clinics were monasteries and churches. Addiction was seen as a vice, addicts had to be punished. Over the years, we have developed different views. Drinking or drug use is a matter of choice, but addiction is a complex interplay between biological, psychological and social factors. Each person has their own story to tell. I used to work as a street psychiatrist in Groningen. One day I got talking to an alcoholic under a viaduct. I asked him: what causes you to keep drinking? His answer was: ‘Every time I have a drink, it feels like my mother puts her arm around me.’He couldn't establish social connections in a normal way, so he resorted to drinking. People have an innate desire for social connectedness. But when you are unable to bond, for example when you are traumatised, people may become attached to other things, such as cannabis or gambling."