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JournalISSN: 1468-215X

Medical Humanities 

BMJ
About: Medical Humanities is an academic journal published by BMJ. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Medical humanities & Narrative. It has an ISSN identifier of 1468-215X. Over the lifetime, 835 publications have been published receiving 10080 citations. The journal is also known as: MH online & Medical humanities edition of the Journal of medical ethics.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Drawing on empirical research in the growing area of recovery, it is suggested that the disruptions and discontinuities introduced by the illness and its social and personal consequences, but also the person’s efforts to overcome these are integral components of the recovery process itself.
Abstract: The prevailing, clinical view of schizophrenia, as reflected in the psychiatric literature, suggests both that people with schizophrenia have lost their sense of self and that they have a diminished capacity to create coherent narratives about their own lives. Drawing on our empirical research in the growing area of recovery, we describe not only the disruptions and discontinuities introduced by the illness and its social and personal consequences, but also the person’s efforts to overcome these, to reconstruct a sense of self, to regain agency and to create a coherent life narrative. We suggest in closing that, rather than simply being a byproduct of recovery, these processes of re-authoring one’s life story are actually integral components of the recovery process itself.

184 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The precise meaning of terms like health, healing and wholeness is likely to remain elusive, because the disconcerting openness of the outlook gained from experience alone resists the reduction of first-person judgments to third-person explanations.
Abstract: Concepts such as disease and health can be difficult to define precisely. Part of the reason for this is that they embody value judgments and are rooted in metaphor. The precise meaning of terms like health, healing and wholeness is likely to remain elusive, because the disconcerting openness of the outlook gained from experience alone resists the reduction of first-person judgments (including those of religion) to third-person explanations (including those of science).

168 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Angela Woods1
TL;DR: It is argued that ‘Against Narrativity’ can and should stimulate robust debate within the medical humanities regarding the limits of narrative, and a range of possibilities for venturing ‘beyond narrative’ are discussed.
Abstract: This paper aims to (re)ignite debate about the role of narrative in the medical humanities. It begins with a critical review of the ways in which narrative has been mobilised by humanities and social science scholars to understand the experience of health and illness. I highlight seven dangers or blind spots in the dominant medical humanities approach to narrative, including the frequently unexamined assumption that all human beings are “naturally narrative.” I then explore this assumption further through an analysis of philosopher Galen Strawson’s influential article “Against Narrativity.” Strawson rejects the descriptive claim that “human beings typically see or live or experience their lives as a narrative” and the normative claim that “a richly Narrative outlook is essential to a well-lived life, to true or full personhood.” His work has been taken up across a range of disciplines but its implications in the context of health and illness have not yet been sufficiently discussed. This article argues that “Against Narrativity” can and should stimulate robust debate within the medical humanities regarding the limits of narrative, and concludes by discussing a range of possibilities for venturing “beyond narrative.”

156 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The instrumental and non-instrumental role of the humanities in the education of doctors in undergraduate medical education via special study modules (SSMs) is discussed.
Abstract: There is now a context for teaching humanities in undergraduate medical education via special study modules (SSMs). This paper discusses the instrumental and non-instrumental role of the humanities in the education of doctors. Three courses are then described and compared. The most successful of the three is a SSM which had the following characteristics: it was voluntary, it was an integral part of the curriculum, and it was examinable.

155 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The coercive and punitive nature of many psycho-policy interventions is described and the implications of psycho- policy for the disadvantaged and excluded populations who are its primary targets are considered.
Abstract: Eligibility for social security benefits in many advanced economies is dependent on unemployed and underemployed people carrying out an expanding range of job search, training and work preparation activities, as well as mandatory unpaid labour (workfare). Increasingly, these activities include interventions intended to modify attitudes, beliefs and personality, notably through the imposition of positive affect. Labour on the self in order to achieve characteristics said to increase employability is now widely promoted. This work and the discourse on it are central to the experience of many claimants and contribute to the view that unemployment is evidence of both personal failure and psychological deficit. The use of psychology in the delivery of workfare functions to erase the experience and effects of social and economic inequalities, to construct a psychological ideal that links unemployment to psychological deficit, and so to authorise the extension of state—and state-contracted—surveillance to psychological characteristics. This paper describes the coercive and punitive nature of many psycho-policy interventions and considers the implications of psycho-policy for the disadvantaged and excluded populations who are its primary targets. We draw on personal testimonies of people experiencing workfare, policy analysis and social media records of campaigns opposed to workfare in order to explore the extent of psycho-compulsion in workfare. This is an area that has received little attention in the academic literature but that raises issues of ethics and professional accountability and challenges the field of medical humanities to reflect more critically on its relationship to psychology.

155 citations

Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Journal in previous years
YearPapers
20234
2021108
202070
201950
201846
201746