Medical humanities
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A growing body of research suggests that religion and spirituality may have a positive effect on mental and physical health. Medical schools have been increasingly offering courses in spirituality and health, particularly about the multi-cultural dimensions of religion and spirituality. ⋯ This article describes a specific curriculum in spirituality, religion and culture that was introduced in 2003 at the University of Washington Psychiatry Residency Program in Seattle, Washington. Reflections about the present and future of subject areas such as spirituality and religion in medical education and psychiatry residency are discussed.
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Death is inevitable, but dying well is not. Despite the role of medical professionals as overseers of dying in contemporary society, there is comparatively little discourse among doctors about the constituents of a good death. In the 15th century, by contrast, the Ars moriendi portrayed normative medieval ideas about good and bad deaths. ⋯ While attitudes to personal autonomy may differ, reflectiveness and dying at home in the presence of family (expressed in the Ars moriendi), remain part of many modern notions of the good death. We argue that medical institutions continue to construct death as a performed battle against physical debility, even when patients may have different views of their preferred deaths. The dialectic approach of the Ars moriendi may offer a way for contemporary doctors to reflect critically on the potential dissonance between their own approach to death and the variety of culturally valorised "good deaths".
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In this paper, Britten's opera Peter Grimes (1945) is used as an illustrative case study through which to examine the depiction of psychiatric disorders in opera. It is argued that Peter Grimes is a powerful example of how opera, in the hands of a great composer, can become an invaluable tool for examining subjective human experience. After a brief discussion of opera as a vehicle to express emotions, various operas are drawn upon to provide a historical perspective and to demonstrate the long interconnection existing between opera and madness. An in-depth analysis of Peter Grimes, its background and central character, is then provided, in order to demonstrate how opera can elicit empathy for individuals affected by mental health problems.
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This paper examines a thread that runs through my memoir of illness: the "shock" of becoming a patient and finding that this new identity, "patienthood", conflicts with the specific, culturally defined role of mother that I idealise as "motherhood". I have taken four excerpts from my memoir and discuss them in relation to the way I constructed my intersectional and conflicting identities as mother and patient, both during the initial phase of my illness and in the act of writing about them afterwards. ⋯ Furthermore, our identities are often shaped by, and are also shaping, that ethical question: how to lead the "good life". It is all these dimensions that constitute the richness of individual "selfhood".
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In this paper, the author examines a style of teaching for a medical ethics course designed for medical students in their clinical years, a style that some believe conflicts with a commitment to analytic philosophy. The author discusses (1) why some find a conflict, (2) why there really is no conflict, and (3) the approach to medical ethics through narratives. The author will also argue that basing medical ethics on the use of narratives has problems and dangers not fully discussed in the literature.