Episode 10: Dr David McGavin - Part 1

David McGavin is a practicing GP,  anthroposophical practitioner, pain specialist, visionary, provocateur, and a fiercely partisan patient advocate, currently dividing his time between retirement, the Kairos rehabilitation center in Greenwich, and locuming in his home town of Maidstone, Kent.

Born in 1946 and growing up in Kent, he completed his degree medicine at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. He had an eclectic foundation period into far flung quarters of the globe including KwaZulu in South Africa as well as a year in West Berlin at the Children's State Hospital providing him with a unique but  rich diversity of cultural experience which has served him well in his career. These experiences provided him with perspectives that become apparent during the interview, demonstrating him as one of the true free thinkers of the profession.

The Kairos Rehabilitation Trust in Greenwich, London, which he help to set up in 2011, can be described as the sister organization to the  Blackthorn Trust, which he originally founded in 1983 in Maidstone.  It is an empowering community scheme embodying various avenues of treatment for those with chronic pain, long-term debilitating conditions as well as serious mental health problems. There is particular emphasis for the needs of those who are socially excluded by reason of ill health, disability, unemployment or other reasons. In 2007 he registered with the Anthroposophical Physician Association, later becoming a GP with special interest in chronic pain in primary care in 2009 with formal accreditation. 

David has previously been awarded the Doctor of the Year in Mental Health in 1993, then the Evian Award for Science and Medicine in 1991.

The interview has been split into two parts, this is part one, and part two will be published over the coming week or so.  David is a wonderfully captivating orator, and he riffs and jams through the three hour interview effortlessly, barely coming up for air, barely taking pause.

David provides a light touch approach to the principles of anthroposophical medicine, and talks about the studies of Euthymy, which the oxford dictionary describes as  is an expressive movement art originated by Rudolf Steiner.

David talks in this first episode about so many themes, from opportunities the medical profession has to be in charge of its own destiny, to an increasingly faceless and dehumanized approach to mental health care in the UK. We talk about medical models of chaos, and how this creates a fertile bed of hope for mental health therapies in patients. He goes into great detail on the ability to control one's inner chatter, chimp or frustrations, and the power of simple practical mental exercises that changed the rules for David.