'I will never love anyone like that again: cognitive behavioural therapy and the pathologisation and medicalisation of ordinary experiences
Psychiatry has a long history of being criticised for the pathologisation and medicalisation of ordinary experiences. One of the most prominent of these critiques is advanced by Allan Horwitz and Jerome Wakefield who argue that instances of ordinary sadness in response to events such as bereavement, heartbreak and misfortune, are being mistakenly diagnosed as depression due to an increasing lack of consideration for aetiology and contextual factors. Critiques concerning pathologisation and medicalisation have not been forthcoming for psychiatry’s close cousin, psychotherapy. Using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, one o...
Source: Medical Humanities - June 7, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Ratnayake, S. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
'Living in a Material World: Frankenstein and new materialism
This paper uses concepts from Karen Barad’s theories from quantum physics and other theoretical approaches from new materialism to show how Frankenstein can be used to introduce this new framework and to challenge an older one based on dualism, representationalism and individualism. A new ethical understanding of the message of the text emerges from this reading—one that rethinks the prohibitions against ‘playing God’ or creating the unnatural and relies instead on an ethics of care. (Source: Medical Humanities)
Source: Medical Humanities - June 7, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Hall, J. Y. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
Narratives of prevention and redemption in opioid overdose obituaries
Obituaries of people who died from an opioid overdose represent a new territory for understanding cultural narratives of the US opioid epidemic. Drawing on textual analysis of 30 opioid overdose obituaries published on Legacy.com between 2015 and 2020, we describe a prototypical narrative conveyed through opioid overdose obituaries, which renders symbolic meaning through the voices of the bereaved. Obituary authors reimagine their subjects as tragic heroes and reconstitute opioid addiction as a curse, plight or affliction that befalls its victims. Many of these obituaries invoke the language of public health, calling for r...
Source: Medical Humanities - June 7, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Adams, E. T., Buchbinder, M. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
Writing the worlds of genomic medicine: experiences of using participatory-writing to understand life with rare conditions
The diagnostic and treatment possibilities made possible by the development and subsequent mainstreaming of clinical genomics services have the potential to profoundly change the experiences of families affected by rare genetic conditions. Understanding the potentials of genomic medicine requires that we consider the perspectives of those who engage with such services; there are substantial social implications involved. There are increasing calls to think more creatively, and draw on more participatory approaches, in evoking rich accounts of lived experience. In this article, we discuss our rationale for, and experiences o...
Source: Medical Humanities - June 7, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Gorman, R., Farsides, B. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
Call for emergency action to limit global temperature increases, restore biodiversity and protect health
Wealthy nations must do much more, much faster. The United Nations General Assembly in September 2021 will bring countries together at a critical time for marshalling collective action to tackle the global environmental crisis. They will meet again at the biodiversity summit in Kunming, China, and the climate conference (Conference of the Parties (COP)26) in Glasgow, UK. Ahead of these pivotal meetings, we—the editors of health journals worldwide—call for urgent action to keep average global temperature increases below 1.5°C, halt the destruction of nature and protect health. Health is already being harmed ...
Source: Medical Humanities - June 7, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Atwoli, L., H Baqui, A., Benfield, T., Bosurgi, R., Godlee, F., Hancocks, S., Horton, R., Laybourn-Langton, L., Monteiro, C. A., Norman, I., Patrick, K., Praities, N., Rikkert, M. G. O., Rubin, E. J., Sahni, P., Smith, R., Talley, N. J., Turale, S., Vazqu Tags: Open access Editorial Source Type: research
A legacy of silence: the intersections of medical sociology and disability studies
Disability remains on the margins of the social sciences. Even where disability is foregrounded as a category of analysis, accounts regularly emerge in silos, with little interdisciplinary dialogue acknowledging the potential intersections and points of convergence. This discord is particularly acute within medical sociology and disability studies, yet there is mostly a legacy of silence about the relationship between the two disciplines. Drawing upon data from a qualitative study with parents of disabled children in the UK, I show the value of meshing ideas and tropes from medical sociology and disability studies to make ...
Source: Medical Humanities - February 21, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Thomas, G. M. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
Food hygiene, public health education and citizenship in Britain, 1948-1967
This article examines food hygiene campaigns in Britain between 1948 and 1967, using these as a way to explore the making of health citizenship and the relationship between state and citizen. The projection of hygienic citizenship amalgamated old concerns around morality, modernity and cleanliness, as well as new issues surrounding the changing position of women, the home and the rise of consumerism. Other ways of thinking about citizenship, such as social citizenship and consumer citizenship, were incorporated within food hygiene campaigns. The success or otherwise of such efforts points to a complex re-working of the con...
Source: Medical Humanities - February 21, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Mold, A. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
Pine fresh: the cultural and medical context of pine scent in relation to health--from the forest to the home
This article takes a sensory history approach to trace the late 19th century and early 20th century use of the pine forest as a therapeutic space, via the tuberculosis sanatoria to the use of pine scent in domestic disinfectant. By focusing on pine as experienced in this period as a microhistorical subject, this methodology will in turn allow for a detailed consideration of how historical context, and in particular medical conceptions and health concerns, can influence the creation of cultural memory. By following the trajectory of pine from its place in the forest to a commercial product used in the home, this will allow ...
Source: Medical Humanities - February 21, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Hickman, C. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
Sexual assault and fatal violence against women during the Irish War of Independence, 1919-1921: Kate Mahers murder in context
This article discusses her inadequately investigated case in the wider context of fatal violence against women and girls during years of major political instability. Ordinarily her violent death would have been subject to a coroner’s court inquiry and rigorous police investigation, but in 1920, civil inquests in much of Ireland were replaced by military courts of inquiry. With the exception of medical issues, where doctors adhered to their ethical responsibility to provide clear and concise evidence on injuries, wounds and cause of death, courts of inquiry were cursory affairs in which Crown forces effectively invest...
Source: Medical Humanities - February 21, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Breathnach, C., O'Halpin, E. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
Talking it better: conversations and normative complexity in healthcare improvement
In this paper, we consider the role of conversations in contributing to healthcare quality improvement. More specifically, we suggest that conversations can be important in responding to what we call ‘normative complexity’. As well as reflecting on the value of conversations, the aim is to introduce the dimension of normative complexity as something that requires theoretical and practical attention alongside the more recognised challenges of complex systems, which we label, for short, as ‘explanatory complexity’. In brief, normative complexity relates to the inherent difficulty of deciding what kind...
Source: Medical Humanities - February 21, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Cribb, A., Entwistle, V., Mitchell, P. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
The mediated discourse and voice of euthanasia: the Israeli media as a case study
Euthanasia is an important social and quality of life issue. However, it is highly controversial and thus continuously debated especially given its legitimacy and legality differ between countries. Little is known about the role media plays concerning this topic. To fill this gap, this study applies a mixed methods approach to a case study of Israeli media, including a quantitative content analysis of news articles (to measure the discourse of ‘civil participation’), a thematic analysis of news articles (to examine the ‘voice’) and a quantitative content analysis of Facebook comments (to measure &ls...
Source: Medical Humanities - February 21, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Shomron, B. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
'The body says it: the difficulty of measuring and communicating sensations of breathlessness
Breathlessness is a sensation affecting those living with chronic respiratory disease, obesity, heart disease and anxiety disorders. The Multidimensional Dyspnoea Profile is a respiratory questionnaire which attempts to measure the incommunicable different sensory qualities (and emotional responses) of breathlessness. Drawing on sensorial anthropology we take as our object of study the process of turning sensations into symptoms. We consider how shared cultural templates of ‘what counts as a symptom’ evolve, mediate and feed into the process of bodily sensations becoming a symptom. Our contribution to the field...
Source: Medical Humanities - February 21, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Malpass, A., Mcguire, C., Macnaughton, J. Tags: Open access Original research Source Type: research
Theorising the neurotypical gaze: autistic love and relationships in The Bridge (Bron/Broen 2011-2018)
In popular media, autistic subjectivity is most often produced through the lens of the neurotypical gaze. Dominant understandings of autism therefore tend to focus on perceived deficits in social communication and relationships. Accordingly, this article has two primary concerns. First, it uses the Danish/Swedish television series The Bridge (Bron/Broen, 2011–2018) and critical responses to the series as examples of how the neurotypical gaze operates, concentrating on the pleasures derived from looking at autism, how autism is ‘fixed’ (Frantz Fanon, 1986) as a socially undesirable subject position, and th...
Source: Medical Humanities - February 21, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: McDermott, C. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
Teaching with madness/'mental illness autobiographies in postsecondary education: ethical and epistemological implications
This paper presents a critical interpretive synthesis of 53 articles describing the pedagogical use of madness/‘mental illness’ autobiographical narratives in postsecondary education. Focusing on instructor intentions and representations of student learning outcomes, findings indicate that narratives are most commonly used as ‘learning material’ to engage students in active learning, cultivate students’ empathy, complement dominant academic/professional knowledges, illustrate abstract concepts and provide ‘real’-life connections to course content. This paper contributes to a conver...
Source: Medical Humanities - February 21, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: de Bie, A. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
Health, well-being, and material-ideal hybrid spaces in Yeatss writing
Traditionally regarded as high-art, poetry is often seen as a superior form of literary achievement consecrating in verse worldviews and lives connected to ideal, transcendental realms, the pursuance of which supposedly leads to some kind of ideal health and spiritual well-being. The poet WB Yeats (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1923), who believed in the power of poetry to reveal realities and states of such perfection, thereby giving purpose to mundane life, likened this effect of poetry to the fashioning of statues as monuments of unageing intellect. However, contradictorily, he also questioned the value of poetry thus conc...
Source: Medical Humanities - February 21, 2022 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Balinisteanu, T. Tags: Original research Source Type: research
