“Exercise is not politically neutral,” writes Jennifer Jane Hardes. That is, “within what has been declared a ‘risk society’ exercise ought to be examined critically as a new potential mode of self-regulation.” In what is both a concise and rich account “of knowledges about exercise and women’s mental health that emerged throughout the late 19th […]
Latest articles
Celebrating Gounod at Tavistock House on his Bicentenary
This blog post is from Prof Desmond (Des) O’Neill, a geriatrician and cultural gerontologist. O’Neill is a Professor in Medical Gerontology and co-chair of the Medical and Health Humanities group at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Wikipedia is a marvellous source of information but its open structure leaves it vulnerable to practical jokes. An entertaining example […]
Eating disorders, interpretation and the case for creative bibliotherapy research
Is reading good for you? Emily Troscianko takes a long look at bibliotherapy and its therapeutic implications for eating disorders. As she points out in ‘Fiction-reading for good or ill: eating disorders, interpretation and the case for creative bibliotherapy research‘, little is known about the efficacy of such interventions, despite the wide use of fiction […]
Book Review: Cicely Saunders: A Life and Legacy
David Clark, Cicely Saunders: A Life and Legacy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 335pp., £25.99 hardcover, ISBN: 9780190637934 Reviewed by Joe Wood, University of Glasgow This biography, almost 20 years in gestation, provides an encyclopaedic account of the life of Cicely Saunders, often described as the founder of the modern hospice movement. The book […]
Opioids and pain in the emergency department: a narrative crisis
The commentary by Jay Baruch and Stacey Springs, ‘Opioids and pain in the emergency department: a narrative crisis’, is available through open access in the current issue of Medical Humanities. A young woman presents to the emergency department in a sickle cell crisis, complaining of unbearable pain. When asked to rate it on a scale of […]
September 44.3
We are pleased to present the September issue, with its breadth of interest and multiple foci—and also a commentary on our June issue (Pain and its Paradoxes) as yet another way of continuing the conversation. Over the coming month, summaries of these articles will appear here on the blog, along with soundbites from authors explaining […]
Encouraging Patient Narrative as a Humanitarian Act of Kindness
This blog post comes from Catherine Kelsey, a nursing lecturer at the University of Bradford. The ability to tell our stories is as crucial to human life as the air we breathe, the food we eat and the functioning of our senses (Robertson and Clegg, 2017). The communicating of stories can help us to create […]
Dear X: A Letter to Chronic Fatigue
Today’s blog post comes from Louise Kenward. Her background is as an artist, currently writing, with a career in the NHS as a psychologist and psychotherapist specialising in Cognitive Analytic Therapy (as a therapist and a supervisor) in East Sussex. She is seeking to find ways of drawing on all of these aspects of her […]
Book Review: The Reading Cure
The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite by Laura Freeman, London: W&N, 2018. Reviewed by Sarah Ahmed, King’s College London Almost ten years after being diagnosed with anorexia, after a decade of eating because she had to, not because she wanted to, Freeman found herself reading Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. His […]
Deafhearing Family Life in The Silent Child: an Unsympathetic Portrayal?
The Silent Child, C. Overton and R. Shenton, 2017. UK: Slick films Reviewed by Dr Sara Louise Wheeler, Lecturer in Social Policy, Bangor University At the 2018 Oscars, writer and actor Rachel Shenton made her acceptance speech in British Sign Language (BSL), when her film, The Silent Child, won the Oscar for best live action […]