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Dis-ease, Bad News, Pain, Weeping and Work: Volume 32.3 of the Journal of Medical Humanities out now

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Research Summary: Journal of Medical Humanities Volume 32.3

Category: Peer-reviewed academic journal; medical humanities scholarship
Key Articles: Disease ontology and medicalization; clinical communication of bad news; pain metaphors; music-inspired therapeutic weeping; poetry and medical practice
Primary Focus: Explores pharmaceutical medicalization of discomfort and clinician resistance strategies, using sinus headache as counter-case study with Foucauldian analysis
Theoretical Framework: Extends Foucault's principles of rarefaction to examine disease legitimization discourse and institutional resistance mechanisms
Clinical Applications: Addresses terminal patient care, therapeutic communication practices, and integrative humanities approaches to suffering
Evidence Grade: Qualitative humanities scholarship; theoretical and critical examination rather than empirical intervention studies
Scholarly Approach: Interdisciplinary integration of medical philosophy, clinical ethics, literary studies, and patient-centered humanities inquiry

Volume 32.3 of the Journal of Medical Humanities is now available.

Dis-ease or Disease? Ontological Rarefaction in the Medical-Industrial Complex, S. Scott Graham:

Recent scholarship in medical humanities has expressed strong concern over the ability of pharmaceuticals companies to medicalize discomfort and subsequently invent diseases. In this article, I explore the clinical debates over the ontology of the sinus headache as a possible counter-case. Extending Foucault’s concept of principles or rarefaction, this paper documents the efforts of clinicians to resist the pharmaceutically-provided understanding of the sinus headache. In so doing, it offers institutions of rarefaction and rarefactive assemblages as useful heuristics for the exploration of disease legitimization discourse.

Hearing Bad News, Janice Morse

Pain and its Metaphors: A Dialogical Approach, Stephen Loftus

How Music-Inspired Weeping Can Help Terminally Ill Patients, Kay Norton

For There is Work to be Done: Poetry and Commentary, Jonathan Reisman, Stacy Nigliazzo, Sarah Buckley, Ryan Childers & Audrey Shafer

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