Blog by Sarah Marie Graye It is said that knowledge is power. So what happens when the knowledge of your own body is ignored or dismissed? This is how I felt when I was told I had asthma and I knew something else was going on. Eventually, I ended up in hospital having emergency […]
Category: Blog
Remembering Anatomy Lessons in an Immigration Detention Center
Blog by Sarah MacLean In medical school, we learn what can go wrong in the human body. We also learn, though, that we’re essentially all the same. From DNA to macro anatomy, we’re all made of the same stuff, and that’s why we’re able to study medicine in the first place. After two months of […]
Access to Covid Protection Among the Swedish Public—Who Has It and What They Get: Lessons Learned from Ongoing Research
Blog by Rui Liu, Susanne Lundin, Talieh Mirsalehi and Margareta Troein Already in early spring 2020, Interpol reported that large amounts of falsified Covid-19 protection devices were in circulation.1 Now, in the beginning of 2021, the global spread of unapproved Covid-19 medicines – including vaccines – is on the rise.2 As our multi-disciplinary research group […]
That Which Cannot Be Seen Must Be Heard: Testimonial Injustice and Narrative Humility
Blog by Leah Teresa Rosen “Invisible illnesses”—like chronic pain, fibromyalgia, and other conditions that cannot be reliably measured or quantified—present a unique challenge to clinicians and caretakers alike. In American culture, we operate under the idea that seeing is believing, almost to a fault. We should not have to witness or experience something first-hand before […]
Beyond Physical and Psychological Health: Philosophical Health
Blog by Luis de Miranda We think we know what physical health and psychological health are, but what is philosophical health and why should it matter? The phrase “physical health” is nowadays considered self-evident. However, it became part of modern discourse only in the nineteenth century, along the publication of manuals such as Health Made […]
NHS in Critical Condition
Blog by Pam Kleinot Former journalist and psychotherapist, and producer of ‘Under the Knife’ (Directed by Susan Steinberg, UK 2019). I was inspired to produce ‘Under the Knife’ by my father, a doctor who worked at the largest state hospital in Southern Africa. He always told me how wonderful the NHS was. It is one […]
What a Year of Pandemic Isolation Taught Me About My Transition
by Riley Black Hormone replacement therapy is a slow form of magic. Very little physical exertion is needed – in my case, little more than twisting open a prescription bottle – but patience is a virtue you learn if you don’t already have it at the start. From the time I took my first doses […]
Noah Webster, Yellow Fever, and the First U.S. Medical Journal
Blog by Richard Kahn Yellow Jack, Yellow Plague, Bronze John – these words struck terror in the citizens of a newly formed republic. Yellow fever in the 1790s was a “disease of unknown cause, curious almost haphazard spread, short duration, and often a high fatality rate. It died out soon after a frost and did […]
Prioritizing Justice in the U.S. Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Blog by Sarah E. Rowan, Michelle Haas, Lilia Cervantes, Kellie Hawkins, Lilian Barahona Vargas, David Duarte-Corado, Alonzo Ryan and Carlos Franco-Paredes Days ago, a clinician in Denver looked with anger at a patient who laid dying in the ICU. “Why didn’t she access care earlier? There are resources available and now she’s dying!” The patient […]
The Concept of ‘Illness Without Disease’ Impedes Understanding of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Response to Sharpe and Greco
Article Summary by Steven Lubet and David Tuller Today we present the very last of MH essays on CFS. The medical condition known as “chronic fatigue syndrome” has often been presumed to be primarily caused by psychological and behavioural factors, and therefore “reversible” by cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) or graded exercise therapy (GET). In 2015, […]