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Health and Illness in Humanities

Introduction

With the current changing trends in psychotherapy and its relation with medicinal care, it is a small wonder that doctors are slowly integrating medical training with psychological components for new students. Helping students understand the psychological process that patients or their relatives might be going through is likely to improve the communication within the heath care system. Not only this, it is likely that the patient may respond more to the medicines and different medicinal procedures if they are not made to feel as though an object to experiment on. In this paper ,I will briefly be analyzing different texts in circulation about medicinal care and its integration with psychological procedures to help ease patients. I believe that this is a practice that is revolutionary and may yield some very positive results as far as patients mental health is concerned, and that of their relatives.

Anselm Straus

In “Time for Dying”, Anseim Strauss focuses on the medicinal practices and healthcare that is provided to individuals who are on the verge of death. IT provides instructions and practices that the care takers of such individuals may utilize and although the book is not narrative in its content, it manages to form a literary pace that the reader can relate to. It is descriptive in nature and the authors introduce their famous “Discovery of Grounded Theory” through several examples and case studies. The theoretical scheme used in describing the author's rendition of reality may seem somewhat dense to some readers as it bases its foundation on some assumptions. However, the text is consistent throughout and evolves in its detailing and theories of mind. It is also targeted towards social scientists who may be more interested in the substantive theories relating to the times of death. Since the central concern of the book is the temporal aspects of care giver's work, social scientists may benefit in their research towards health, medicine and hospitals. There is also a thorough understanding presented in the book towards the training provided to physicians and nurses in the care of illnesses. Communication within healthcare is highlighted strongly in the book.

The authors are adamant about the fact that while training is provided in terms of medical procedures and non-erroneous diagnosis and treatments, hardly any attention is given to the topic of communicating with patients or relatives. Students are given extensive training manuals and workshops over taking care of illnesses or dealing with post-mortem care, but there is no psychologically directed training for dealing with families of dying patients. This is a topic that the authors believe requires professional consideration, and talk of the many ways in which it could be handled. The temporal features of a hospital are discussed in the book. Since there is currently no standard practice of conduct towards dying patients, medical professionals rely on common sense and assumptions, while remaining apart from the mindset of said individuals. While some believe that is the professional thing to do, most psychologists are aware of ...