In “Supple Bodies, Healthy Minds: Yoga, Psychedelics and American Mental Health,” Lucas Richert and Matthew DeCloedt chart the entanglement of yoga and psychedelics in America during the first three quarters of the twentieth century, paying special attention to the countercultural 1960s, when the two became widely popular amongst a generation of primarily middle class, white […]
Tag: research
Paradigm Shift? Purity, Progress and the Origins of First-Episode Psychosis
In “Paradigm Shift? Purity, Progress and the Origins of First-Episode Psychosis,” Suze G. Berkhout examines images, concepts and metaphors in the medical literature on early intervention into first-episode psychosis (FEP) to understand how its embeds notions of purity and progress, and how the origins of the category is coeval with the development of new anti-psychotic […]
Evidence and Speculation: Reimagining Approaches to Architecture and Research within the Paediatric Hospital
Evidence-based design (EBD), a method of design that is derived from evidence-based medicine, might at first seem a far-cry from the concerns of speculative design, but in their article “Evidence and Speculation: Reimagining Approaches to Architecture and Research within the Paediatric Hospital,” Rebecca McLaughlan and Alan Pert show that speculative design functions in ways that […]
Sing Your Heart Out: Community Singing as Part of Mental Health Recovery
Tom Shakespeare and Alice Whieldon report on a mixed-methods study of the Norfolk-based (UK) community-run “Sing Your Heart Out” (SYHO) project in their article, “Sing Your Heart Out: Community Singing as Part of Mental Health Recovery.” Through a combination of semi-structured interviews and focus groups with project leaders and participants, along with participant observation, Shakespeare […]
Using photography to enhance GP trainees’ reflective practice and professional development
Few would argue against the value of the ability to reflect upon one’s actions and one’s practice more broadly. According to photographic artist Rutherford, general practitioner Emer Forde, together with colleagues Jacqueline Priego-Hernandez, Aurelia Butcher and Clare Wedderburn, ‘reflection can foster professionalism, empathy and attitudinal changes’. In making this point, they highlight the Royal College […]
Blind alleys and dead ends: researching innovation in late 20th century surgery
How do medical innovations evolve? In “Blind alleys and dead ends: researching innovation in late 20th century surgery,” Harriet Palfreman and Roger Kneebone examine the fortunes of a surgical innovation—the PCCL (percutaneous cholecystolithotomy) treatment of gallstones—in the late 20th century. In 1988, eight patients underwent the procedure, which required extracting the gallstones using an endoscope […]
Women, ‘madness’ and exercise
“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 […]
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 […]
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 […]