Article Summary by Helen Brooks There is increasing evidence of the supportive role pets play for people with mental health conditions. Pets have been shown to distract people from upsetting symptoms and experiences, offer an important source of comfort and routine, and promote social interaction. This paper aimed to extend our understanding of this therapeutic […]
Month: September 2019
Pain Medicine Special Interdisciplinary Issue
Call for Papers Pain Medicine is planning an interdisciplinary Special Issue on meaning in the context of pain. Guest editors are Dr Simon van Rysewyk, Dr John Quintner and Prof Milton Cohen. Special Issue Themes and Sub-Themes Including, but not restricted to, the following: Common experiential meanings of pain in different contexts Chronic non-cancer pain […]
What’s in it for the Animals? Symbiotically Considering ‘Therapeutic’ Human-Animal Relations within Spaces and Practices of Care Farming
Article Summary by Richard Gorman Care farming is an emerging form of healthcare that aims to deploy farming practices as a type of therapeutic intervention, with human-animal relations framed as providing important opportunities for human health. The growing body of academic work on care farming links participation in a care farming scheme as having the […]
Essential(ist) Medicine Promoting Social Explanations for Racial Variation in Biomedical Research
Article Summary by Iliya Gutin When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail—and when all you have is a definition of race rooted in biology and genetics, every racial disparity in health outcomes is attributed to these intrinsic differences. Fortunately, this narrative applies far less to contemporary biomedicine than the […]
How “The Fault In Our Stars” Illuminates Four Themes of the Adolescent End of Life Narrative
Article Summary by Anna Obergfell Kirkman This paper suggests the creation of a new category of end of life (EOL) narrative, focused specifically on adolescents, in recognition of their distinct developmental features and their strong preferences about the dying process. Adult EOL narrative has long been showcased, and pediatric EOL narrative is often restricted by […]
A Politics of the Senses: The Political Role of the Kings Evil in Richard Wiseman’s “Severall Chirurgicall Treatises”
Article Summary by Adam S. Komorowski Tuberculosis is a disease that comes in many forms: prior to the advent of modern medicine, one of the more common forms of tuberculosis was found in the lymph nodes in the neck. This form, especially within England and France, was known as “the King’s-Evil”. Thought to only be […]
Parroting Patriots
Article Summary by Brad Bolman My article sets out to analyze the new ways of being together that exist when military veterans suffering from PTSD begin relational therapy programs involving care for abandoned parrots. I wanted to explore not only the idea of interspecies trauma, but the possibility that such a thing might be shared […]