General News
27 November, 2025
Call the Doctor with Dr Felix Ritson: the power of hope
The doctor explores the effect that hope has on our well-being and health, as well as the impact of negative thinking patterns. He discusses the GP's role in conveying the message of hope to their patients.
Several senior GPs have told me that one of their primary roles is to provide their patients with hope.
It is also required of a GP that they are honest with their patients, despite the uncomfortable truths they often need to convey.
Thankfully, humans have an innate sense of goodness that drives us towards health, and hence, being honestly hopeful is almost always possible.
What gets in the way of this obvious truth about life are commonly held negative thinking patterns.
People often see the worst in things, usually stemming from pervasive fear as a result of previous suffering.
This self-protective mechanism can blind us to future possibilities, but also blind us to seeing how good things already are.
We are always changing, and hence always have the capability to change.
Many people indeed convince themselves they cannot change, despite their own body and mind willing them to.
Symptoms are experiences caused by illness and disease; they are messages for us.
They not only motivate us to make healthy changes, but also help us identify what is going wrong.
Much of the role of a GP is helping people to understand what their symptoms are telling them. Unfortunately, many of us misinterpret our symptoms.
We look for solutions in the wrong places, seeking an easier way, or more often, a way that doesn't require us to confront things in our lives we don't want to face.
There are no shortcuts to health.
Thankfully, everyone knows this deep down.
Humans have a sense of 'inner teaching', colloquialised to the word 'intuition', that guides us towards health.
This innate sense of health, coupled with our ability to change, enables us to prosper.
People seem to often hold the opinion that society is functioning poorly and things in general are getting worse.
Whilst we must identify flaws in our world and use this understanding to motivate us to improve, the suggestion that, on the whole, things are bad is incorrect.
Barack Obama famously said that “if you had to choose any moment in history in which to be born, you’d choose right now”.
It does not take long when learning about history to become grateful for the present.
Of course, there are still tragedies, disadvantages, and all manner of bad things; however on ordinary people's lives are better now than at any other time in history.
Fewer people live in poverty than ever before. Life expectancy is higher than ever before.
Fewer women and children die during childbirth than ever before. In many parts of the world, slavery is essentially non-existent.
Terrible diseases like Smallpox, Polio, Measles, and Syphilis are, in many ways, things of the past.
More people can read than ever before.
Until as recently as the 20th century, people often only heard several hundred songs during their entire life, and many (of those who could) only read a handful of books.
Now, with the internet, we have previously unfathomable troves of art and knowledge literally at our fingertips.
We eat cuisines from all over the world, something only dreamt of by our recent ancestors.
Tea, spices, and salt, which at times were worth more than their weight in gold, are now so accessible that they are often given freely.
Human society, in most ways, is undeniably better off today than ever before.
Importantly, this trend is continuing, and hence it is more likely than not that things will continue to improve.
Humans cannot be healthy without hope.
Thankfully, it is fundamental to the very nature of the world that it tends towards goodness; every tree wants to grow.