Exploring links between trauma and health – Dr. Gabor Maté awarded SFU’s Sterling Prize for Controversy

How does our past trauma impact our health? Can we begin to heal by addressing the root causes that made us ill in the first place?

For Dr. Gabor Maté, the mind and the body are inseparable. And for the past several decades, he has challenged traditional medical thought by communicating that idea in a way that resonates with millions of people around the world. 

To recognize his ongoing work exploring the links between trauma and health and championing the concept of trauma-informed healing, Maté is awarded the 2024 Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy. The Sterling Prize is an endowment fund that honours and encourages work that provokes or contributes to the understanding of controversy. 

“The gift I have is communicating very simple facts,” explains Maté, a former adjunct professor in SFU’s School of Criminology and winner of SFU’s Outstanding Alumni Award in 2008. “It's almost laughably simple: All I'm saying is that (mind and body) are all one, which shouldn't be controversial.

“You look at the relationship between emotional stress and asthma, inflammation of the lungs, relationship between emotional stress and breast cancer, relationship between emotional stress and autoimmune disease – it has been extensively studied and published in major journals, and it's completely ignored in the medical schools.”

Which means, Maté continues, that when patients go to a rheumatologist for an inflamed joint, they're given anti-inflammatory drugs. But the doctor will not discuss the traumas the person may have sustained that have helped to undermine the immune system. The controversy, he says, is simply due to lack of awareness.

“From my perspective, my work is not in the least controversial. I mean, when it comes to actual science. I talk about the fact that the mind and the body can't be separated, and that emotions have a huge role to play in health and illness.”

A retired family physician who worked for years treating addiction in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Maté has written five books on the links between trauma, addiction and mental illness. His work has been published in 43 different languages and his books have sold almost four million copies. He regularly goes on speaking tours, sharing his ideas with packed audiences around the world. 

Maté’s strength, as he sees it, is two-fold: First, as a family physician, Maté has experienced the whole range of human experience, from delivering babies to caring for the dying in palliative care; and second, he is also a gifted writer and speaker. 

“I get the whole picture. I see the connections,” Maté says. “My legacy has been my ability to bring these things together in a way that has really resonated with a lot of people.”

He first began to explore the mind-body connection while working in palliative care. He noticed the personality traits of people who got sick versus those of people who didn’t across a whole range of chronic illnesses. But, he says, despite research published in significant scientific and medical journals, no one was speaking about it.

“It was like the Bermuda Triangle,” Maté says. “Like it sank without a trace, like it didn't even happen. It's bizarre to read these medical papers and scientific studies and have nobody in the profession pay attention to them.”

Three decades later, his work continues to have impact. In addition to his sold-out speaking tours, he gets emails daily, thanking him for his work. The Globe and Mail’s Canadian non-fiction best seller list for Aug. 31, 2024, featured four of Mate’s books, including some that were published more than 20 years ago. His new book, “The Myth of Normal”, written with his son Daniel, spent 19 weeks on the New York Times best sellers list.

“What keeps me motivated is very simple,” says Maté, who admits that despite the popularity of his message, acceptance within the medical community is slow. “I just love looking for the truth, you know? Which doesn't mean I'm always right, but I just want to know what's going on. What's the truth here? Whether that has to do with Middle Eastern politics, or science, or medicine – what's the truth here?

“People need the truth. And, you know, if nobody ever paid attention, I might have given up a long time ago.”