Module 1: Medical Humanities Flashcards
What is WHO’s definition of health
A state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity
What are medical humanities
A series of intersections, exchanges and entanglements between the biomedical sciences, arts, humanities and social sciences
What is a political economy approach definition of health
Access to and control over the basic material and nonmaterial resources that sustain and promote life at a high level of satisfaction
What is a medical anthropology definition of health
A set of common sense ideas which we have all been learning since childhood about our bodily processes, the way in which we monitor them and the standard rhetorical devices which we use to describe them
What are restitution narratives
Yesterday I was healthy, today I am sick, but tomorrow I will be well again (biomedicine emerges heroic and triumphant, metaphysical elements of illness do not fit this narrative)
What are metaphysical elements of illness
Changes to your self, sense of identity and purpose
What are chaos narratives
People have no distance from their illness, are consumed by it. “And then, and then, and then” We have a moral duty to honour these stories by listening when they are recounted. All treatments pointless. Whirlpool
Who is the author of the wounded healers (4 narratives)
Arthur Frank
What is a testimonial story
Press you to witness and and believe what they tell you while excluding information that contradicts the key story line.
What is a quest story
Departure date, initiation period and return, like the stages of a journey. Endurance and forbearance by the storyteller are key. By experiencing suffering the hero encounters the reason for their trials.
Chaos, quest and restitution stories are also testimonial stories. What part of reality does chaos leave out?
Possibility of hope and acceptance
Chaos, quest and restitution stories are also testimonial stories. What part of reality does quest leave out?
Diminish greatly the suffering involved
Chaos, quest and restitution stories are also testimonial stories. What part of reality does restitution leave out?
Metaphysical aspects of illness (why did this happen to me?)
What is illness vs disease (Cassell 1976)
Illness is what we feel when we go to visit a doctor and disease is what we have after we have been to the doctor’s office
What is illness (Helman 2007)
A type of misfortune which brings on a subjective experience of physical and emotional changes which are generally confirmed by other people
What is illness (Kleinman 1989)
To become temporarily demoralised with one’s world
What is the language of distress (Helman 2007)
A bridge between the subjective experiences of impaired wellbeing and social acknowledgement of them
What is healthcare pluralism
The many ways you can treat illness
What are the three sectors of healthcare
Lay, folk and professional (professional is the tiny tip of the iceberg, other two below the surface of our attention most of the time)
What is the hierarchy of resort
The people people go to to seek relief from illness, professionals usually neither first nor last
What are contested illnesses
Show the multidirectional flow of interpretive work in doing health and illness, gets political (e.g you consider yourself ill but few agree you have a disease)
What is disease (Canguilhem 1991)
“A departure from the norm established by biomedical authority”
But normal is undefined, everyone’s normal is different
What is pilgrimage (Turner)
The process of going to a far place to understand a familiar place better