Love, Fear, and Health

Robert Maunder, MD is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and holds the Chair in Health and Behaviour at Sinai Health. His research focuses on how close relationships influence health, and on the compassionate support of resilience in healthcare workers. Clinically, he provides psychiatric care for people with chronic physical illnesses. Jonathan Hunter, MD is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and holds the Pencer Family Chair in Applied General Psychiatry at Sinai Health. His research and clinical practice focus on the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic care of cancer patients and other people with serious medical and surgical illnesses.

“This book is written to appeal to a wide clinical audience, including physicians, nurses and other care providers. The understanding this book promotes could go far in improving the care all clinicians offer to their patients.”- Barry Gilbert (U of T Medicine Magazine, Winter 2015) "Overall, this book is an engaging one that healthcare workers of all kinds will find interesting, informative and helpful. The rest of us, who sometimes are patients, will also find this book worthwhile, and in reading it may even recognize issues in ourselves and in those we know. "- Keith Oatley (The Literary Review of Canada, April, 2016) ‘Free from jargon, the text is easy to read, and each section provides several examples and a useful summary…. The book could help healthcare workers to better meet their patients’ needs and ultimately improve their health.’- Angela Davis (Nursing Standard February 2016) ‘This book is an excellent contribution to the literature on human attachment as it relates to health issues. Highly recommended.’- M.C. Matteis (Choice Magazine vol 53:10:2016)

• IntroductionSection One: Vexing Health Care1. What is Health Care?2. Why Else Do We Get Sick?3. Health Happens Between UsSummary of Part OneSection Two: Attachment & HealthIntroduction to Section Two: What is Attachment?4. Attachment Sculpts the Brain5. All Grown Up and Still Attached6. Feeling secure is Good For You7. Depression8. Attachment is a Response to Stress9. Why Are So Many of Us Fat, Drunk, Stationary Smokers? 10. I Don’t Know What You Have But I’ve Seen It Before and You Have It Bad11. Trouble in the Patient-Provider RelationshipSummary of Part TwoSection Three: Relational Health CareIntroduction to Section Three: Principles of Adaptation and Change12. How Health Care Providers Can Adapt When Attachment Anxiety Interferes13. How Health Care Providers Can Adapt When Attachment Avoidance Interferes 14. How Health Care Providers Can Adapt When Fearful Attachment Interferes 15. Changing the System16. Becoming More Secure17. Beyond Health Care Relationships: A Wider attachment Perspective on HealthAfterword