As a research technique, poetic transcription transforms people’s stories and enables deeper analysis and engagement between participants, readers and researchers. Chronic illness is often ...

There is widespread acceptance in medical humanities circles that reading is good for doctors and that, in medical educational terms, it is particularly good at making better doctors by widening ...

Jane Austen’s letters describe a two-year deterioration into bed-ridden exhaustion, with unusual colouring, bilious attacks and rheumatic pains. In 1964, Zachary Cope postulated tubercular Addison’s ...

Material aspects of disability inequality, such as access to quality services, housing and employment, are an urgent, worldwide concern. Less recognised though, are psychological layers of prejudice ...

Psychiatric textbooks tend to describe psychosis as it is experienced by men. The well-documented illness of Zelda Fitzgerald illustrates the feminine side of psychosis. The distinctive features of ...

Correspondence to Joe Wood, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Glasgow, Dumfries DG1 4UQ, UK; j.wood.2{at}research.gla.ac.uk In this article I explore how Cicely Saunders championed ...

Cerebro-vascular events are, after neurodegenerative disorders, the most frequent cause of brain damage that leads to the patient's impaired cognitive and/or bodily functioning. While the ...

The Cost of Dying Exhibition: public, professional and political reactions to a visual exhibition depicting experiences of poverty at the end of life ...

Most commentators draw a sharp distinction between therapy and enhancement, applauding therapy and rejecting enhancement. Not only is this distinction unclear but enhancement is often seen in ...

Correspondence to Professor Brendan D Kelly, Department of Psychiatry, Trinity College Dublin, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences, Tallaght Hospital, Dublin 24, Ireland; brendankelly35{at}gmail.com ...

A patient who requests an amputation deemed medically unnecessary by professionals is disqualified per se from being regarded as having medical decision-making capacity. This decision is based on the ...

In recent decades, physicians have diagnosed fictional and non-fictional characters through portraits, biographies and writing. We argue that such an exercise can be beneficial for a uniquely health ...