Medical Humanities最新文献

{"title":"'DEFEND, DEFEND, DEFEND': women's HIV health activism, embodied feminist performance-making and radical kindness.","authors":"Katharine E Low, Silvia Petretti, Chuck Blue Lowry, Maryam Shaharuddin","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-013110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2024-013110","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article shares the learning from our project, <i>Positively Past, Positively Present</i> (PPPP), which started in 2022 in partnership with Positively UK, formerly known as Positively Women, a UK HIV support and advocacy organisation. The PPPP project is an archival, oral herstory project which focuses on capturing the herstories and experiences of women and others who were part of Positively Women. Our aim was to consolidate these women's herstories and by sharing this knowledge prevent these extraordinary narratives from being invisibilised again. In this article we articulate how our use of embodied feminist performance-making in health activism can help to nurture the roots and interconnections of these knowledges, and in doing so, 'DEFEND' the loss of these stories.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143434271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How to prove her wrong: hierarchies of watching in the case of the fasting girl Sarah Jacob.","authors":"Marie-Andrée Jacob","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-012983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2024-012983","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The article revisits the story of the watch of Sarah Jacob and her miraculous fasting, which was showcased as a lucrative spectacle in her family home in Wales, followed by her death in 1869. The Sarah Jacob case rehearses the familiar urge among Victorian English medical men to watch and detect, including a calculated drive to make breakthroughs in popular research areas of hysteria and simulation within the domain of female maladies. It also embodies a particular historical moment of London metropolitan expertise's curiosity towards 'Welsh culture'. Yet the article explains how the case reveals the need for medical men to turn away from the fasting girl's bedside and, in turn, to outsource the act of watching to nurses. Shifting the emphasis from the girl to the watch itself, I argue that the function of nurses in the case has been unjustifiably ignored. Their role as mediators between the different worlds that the case brings into conflict sheds further light on the 'clinical gaze' and more specifically on the hierarchies of professional observations of bodies that defy rational explanations.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143400239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prozac as medicine, metaphor and identity: reimagining recovery as a rhetorical process in Lauren Slater's <i>Prozac Diary</i>.","authors":"Swikriti Sanyal, Hemachandran Karah","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-012973","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2024-012973","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper examines Lauren Slater's memoir, <i>Prozac Diary</i>, to understand the role of language in reimagining the notion of recovery. Written from the standpoint of a consumer of antidepressant drugs, <i>Prozac Diary</i> underlines the pervasiveness of professional psychiatry's pathologising practices and its psychopharmacological interventions in the 90s in the USA. Moreover, it unpacks the nuances of the relationship between the person and the pill at the intersections of myriad medical and socio-cultural discourses. Reading the memoir from the perspectives of disability studies scholars such as Kimberly E. Emmons and Lennard J. Davis, we argue that Slater's use of figurative language to critically engage with the Prozac discourse is a rhetorical act of self-care. Furthermore, we contend that by normalising illness and challenging the ableist assumptions of normalcy, Slater also invests in rhetorical care of the collective self/bodymind.This paper demonstrates how through a metaphorical representation of Prozac, Slater questions the predominant mental health discourses that construct the meanings of 'illness' and 'health' and shape illness and health-based identities. Simultaneously, through her dialogical negotiations with the Prozac discourse to reconstitute a complex health identity, she raises fundamental questions about the existence of a 'core', 'authentic', 'healthy', pre-Prozac selfhood that the drug claims to restore. Therefore, by unravelling the intrapersonal, socio-cultural and discursive ramifications of recovery, as opposed to psychiatry's perfunctory understanding of biological cure as a restoration of a socially desirable state of 'normalcy', she is able to reclaim the lived experience of recovery. We argue that in <i>Prozac Diary</i>, recovery does not merely imply a passive internalisation of psychiatry's biological determinism and its psychopharmaceutical approaches. Instead, it is a rhetorical process that enables the medicalised individuals to actively engage with the mental health system and interrogate the possibility of critically responding to its normative frameworks as agentic subjects.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143392299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Finland's New Children's Hospital and resurgent charity in a Nordic post-welfare state.","authors":"Henni Alava, Janette Lindroos, Arvi Pihlman","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-013128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2024-013128","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Finland's New Children's Hospital (NCH) opened in 2018 after a high-profile charity campaign. Through an analysis of the campaign, we illustrate how debates about children's hospitals and charities are simultaneously shaped by universal debates over the ownership and funding of healthcare services, and by the particularities of historical context and local institutional arrangements. Such debates also draw from and contribute to shaping cultural repertoires, particularly shared beliefs and values concerning children, the state and charity. In Finland, the NCH marked a break from an established model of publicly funded hospitals, and a return to the pre-welfare state era when charities played a role in healthcare. The campaign thus generated substantial public debate, in which we identify three core claims: (1) Hospitals must be built with public funding and oversight. (2) Children are suffering because politicians have failed, and a new model is needed. (3) The NCH further strengthens Finland's excellence in paediatric healthcare and promotes health technology exports. Over the course of the campaign, critique faded away, and the second and third lines of argument came to dominate public debate. Through a reflection on the historically changing relations between state, charity and children that shaped what we conceptualise as the NCH assemblage, we show how clichéd cultural tropes naturalised the political shift toward a post-welfare state that is embedded in the NCH campaign. As citizens without voter rights, children are exceptionally easy for politicians to sidestep when allocating funds. Yet, as what Sara Ahmed describes as 'objects of feeling', children are also exceptionally potent targets for charity, who, in the NCH case, came to serve as tools for the neoliberal disassembling and reassembling of healthcare services in Finland.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143374632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the consequences of childbirth: obstetrics/gynaecology, comparative anatomy and racial theories in 19th century France and Brazil.","authors":"Maria Helena Pereira Toledo Machado","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-013097","DOIUrl":"10.1136/medhum-2024-013097","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The following paper is centred on an analysis of comparative studies of the human pelvis developed over the 19th century by mostly French natural scientists, physical anthropologists, students of the human anatomy and doctors engaged in the initial stages of the emerging fields of gynaecology and obstetrics. As this paper will argue, there was considerable overlap between these specialisations, producing a fundamentally masculine, Eurocentric and racialised knowledge that had an enormous impact in establishing racially informed gynaecological and obstetric practices. This paper argues that comparative pelvic anatomy studies originated from the belief that African and Black women had specifically different pelves and genitalia and served to stratify women of different races and promoted racially oriented obstetric and gynaecological treatments. Despite their European origins, these French publications had profound repercussions across various regions of the Atlantic world and directly influenced the medical care provided to women of African descent in both slave and postemancipation societies, particularly in Brazil. In 1887, a doctoral candidate from the Rio de Janeiro Medical School (Brazil) wrote a dissertation in which he advocated and justified the racialised treatments offered to enslaved, free and soon-to-be-free women of African descendent who delivered their offspring at the medical school's maternity ward. In his advocacy for such practices, the author drew connections between the prevailing methods at Rio de Janeiro's Medical School to a long lineage of French medical thought on the racialised comparative anatomy of women's pelvises throughout the 19th century.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143041545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"'God knows why these Sanghaalis are so rabidly against C-section!': spectre of medical coloniality haunts doctor-patient relationship in Guruprasad Kaginele's <i>Hijab</i> (2020).","authors":"Manali Karmakar","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-012938","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2024-012938","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Through the lens of Guruprasad Kaginele's novel <i>Hijab</i>, the issues of intolerance and distrust that exist in American rural hospitals-where the Indian immigrant doctors fail to understand the inhibitions and apprehensions of the African immigrant birthing mothers, turning them into objects of mockery and disgust, despite sharing colonial histories of racialised discrimination, biases and prejudices-are examined. The ruptured relationship between Indian immigrant doctors and Sanghaali Muslim immigrant birthing mothers dramatised in the novel provides an insight into how Indian immigrant doctors' psyche is unconsciously imbued with medical coloniality, which has not received much scholarly attention. Drawing on critical approaches such as various orders of gaze-male, medical, colonial and imperial-and the concept of intersectionality, the hybrid subjectivities of the Indian immigrant doctors, ruptured doctor-patient relationship, and non-agentic status of the immigrant birthing mothers as represented in the novel are analysed. In light of the issues highlighted in this study, it is recommended that the novel <i>Hijab</i> could be a potential addition to the critical medical humanities curriculum to help medical students understand the cultural roots of racialised prejudices and discriminations, the spectre of which has continued to haunt caregiving in rural American healthcare settings.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143013894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cultural assumptions and the good death: rethinking global frameworks.","authors":"Shahaduz Zaman","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-013062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2024-013062","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The concept of a 'good death' remains debated, with research largely focused on the Global North, leaving gaps in understanding its relevance to the Global South. While the concept of a good death is not a strict binary, notable differences exist. In the Global North, emphasis often lies on individual autonomy and preferences, whereas in the Global South, the focus tends to include the perspectives and needs of family and social networks.Despite differing notions of a good death between the Global North and South, Global North frameworks often set the benchmark. For example, '<i>The Economist</i>'s Quality of Death Index' ranks countries by their provision of a 'good death', with Western nations, particularly the UK, leading. While not explicitly endorsing a Global North model, the index promotes a narrative that implicitly positions institutionalised and professionalised palliative care as the ideal, urging lower-ranked Global South countries to adopt these standards.Using a postcolonial perspective, this paper critiques the universalisation of such models, which position Global North approaches as the gold standard. Drawing on literature and personal observations, I explore the cultural assumptions surrounding a good death and advocate for recognising diverse ways of dying. I propose that a good death consists of two components: 'value', or the judgement of what constitutes a good death, and 'logistics', or the arrangements made to achieve it. This framework underscores the importance of tailoring end-of-life care to the negotiation of value and logistics within different cultural contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143013887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Impossible motherhood: a health humanities reading of two monologues for women.","authors":"Leah Sidi","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-013094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2024-013094","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Separated by a gap of 27 years, Anna Reynold's <i>Jordan</i> (1992) and Gary Owen's <i>Iphigenia in Splott</i> (2015) offer, on the surface, dramaturgically similar critiques of the impact of poverty on motherhood. Both plays are critically acclaimed monologues for women, which describe the death of a baby following inadequate interventions from health and/or social care services. This article examines the different theatrical contexts for these plays and offers a situated reading of the representation of maternal crisis in circumstances of social deprivation. When considered in parallel, <i>Jordan</i> and <i>Iphigenia in Splott</i> reveal the persistent vulnerability faced by low-income mothers and would-be mothers under conditions of Thatcherite and austerity governing. In the context of the health humanities, they reveal how austerity government shapes the lives of women through the scarcity of adequate maternal health and social care services. By placing Owen's play in dialogue with the 1990s feminist monologue, I suggest that Owen posits a dramaturgical through-line between post-2008 austerity policies and the socio-political conditions that concerned second wave feminists. <i>Iphigenia in Splott</i> highlights the post-2008 crisis of care and demonstrates its continuity with forms of social marginalisation, housing precarity and 'hollowing out' introduced under Thatcher and thematised two decades earlier in <i>Jordan</i>.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143013896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploration of parental perspectives and involvement in therapeutic communication approaches for deaf and/or hard-of-hearing children at special schools in South Africa.","authors":"Aisha Casoojee, Katijah Khoza-Shangase, Amisha Kanji","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-012900","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2024-012900","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Family-centred intervention optimises the development of communication abilities and academic outcomes in children with hearing loss. Cognisance of family values, respect for family differences and adaptations to cultural and linguistic diversity ensure the collaboration of parent-professional relationships. This study investigated the parental involvement and parental perceptions regarding the communication intervention approaches implemented (i.e., traditional speech-language therapy and listening and spoken language-South Africa-adapted Auditory Verbal Therapy) for children with profound hearing loss. The study was conducted at special schools for children with hearing loss across four provinces in South Africa, where grade-level core skills are taught using a mainstream curriculum complemented by specialised instruction. Data were collected through a parental self-administered survey and a retrospective record review. An inductive analysis of transcripts was conducted, and the Fisher's exact test assessed associations between data sets. Findings demonstrated limited informational counselling provided to parents regarding communication intervention options. Following the initiation of the communication intervention process, findings indicate parental buy-in, fuelled by their aspirations for their child with a hearing loss. Although results suggest that parents prefer a listening and spoken language therapeutic communication modality, this approach is hindered by the lack of culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate care. This is an important finding, particularly in multilingual and multicultural contexts like South Africa. These context-specific outcomes emphasise that communication interventionists must be cognizant of parental-informed decision-making, cultural contexts and linguistic sensitivity for effective parent-professional collaborations.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143013891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"'Captivating voices': evaluation of a patient-centred animated video on excessive physical exercise and eating disorders.","authors":"Gerrit Brandt, Heike Bartel, Georgios Paslakis","doi":"10.1136/medhum-2024-013003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2024-013003","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This project aimed to evaluate the acceptance of a short, animated video addressing excessive exercise within the context of eating disorder (ED) behaviours among diverse target groups, assess its impact and explore potential associations with disordered eating risk. An online survey was conducted, recruiting 170 participants who were shown a 3-minute and 11-second long animated video portraying narratives of individuals with lived experiences related to excessive exercise and ED. Participants provided demographic information, engaged in the video evaluation answering a 9-item questionnaire and completed a subsequent ED screening and a drive for muscularity questionnaire. In an optional open-ended comment section, participants provided suggestions, feelings, ideas and criticism. Individuals identified as at risk for disordered eating reported a significantly higher personal impact of the video, including the motivation to self-reflect on their personal exercise habits. Qualitative analyses revealed themes related to suggestions for the video's use, general reflections on sports behaviours and ED, and reactions to the video's artistic design. This interdisciplinary project underscores the potential of artistic animated short videos co-designed with individuals with lived experience in conveying narratives and fostering introspection among individuals at risk for ED and excessive exercise behaviours. Further exploration and refinement of interdisciplinary artistic approaches are recommended to enhance effectiveness and inclusivity in addressing ED and associated behaviours.</p>","PeriodicalId":46435,"journal":{"name":"Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143013883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}