Writing and Health Care
Creative and Critical Approaches
Published on 29. May 2025
Book
Hardback
296 pages
978-1-350-41707-6 (ISBN)
Description
How can arts-based approaches benefit patients and professionals within the health care system? Can the skills creative writers use to craft their work be applied more broadly to enhance the wellbeing of those in need of medical care?
This book offers a practical introduction to how these ideas can be employed within health care settings as treatments, to foster more empathetic and humane interactions between patients and practitioners, and to help understand the personal narratives of others. Combining aesthetic theory with practice, Writing and Health Care reflects on the role of creative expression in bettering the life and well-being of oneself and others. Touching on areas as diverse as health humanities, narrative medicine, creative therapies and transformative language arts, it introduces a range of genres including graphic medicine, illness narratives, "sick lit" and more. Foregrounding health justice and thinking with intersectional communities at the forefront, this book enables readers to write in ways that resist limited thinking, contribute to the transformation of health systems and processes, and generate works that promote forms of expression with therapeutic effects for patients and practitioners alike.
This book offers a practical introduction to how these ideas can be employed within health care settings as treatments, to foster more empathetic and humane interactions between patients and practitioners, and to help understand the personal narratives of others. Combining aesthetic theory with practice, Writing and Health Care reflects on the role of creative expression in bettering the life and well-being of oneself and others. Touching on areas as diverse as health humanities, narrative medicine, creative therapies and transformative language arts, it introduces a range of genres including graphic medicine, illness narratives, "sick lit" and more. Foregrounding health justice and thinking with intersectional communities at the forefront, this book enables readers to write in ways that resist limited thinking, contribute to the transformation of health systems and processes, and generate works that promote forms of expression with therapeutic effects for patients and practitioners alike.
Reviews / Votes
Janelle Adsit's research offers valuable insights into the field of creative writing studies, particularly by highlighting its intersections with writing therapy, art therapy, narrative medicine, and related areas. Her work reveals the unique contributions that writing can make toward personal growth and physical and mental well-being-a dimension that is increasingly prioritized by Chinese researchers in creative writing. Adsit's research challenges the notion of writing as an exclusive domain of "Romantic genius," instead presenting it as a potential inherent in all individuals. From her findings, we can infer that the communal and urban practices of creative writing serve as transformative literary actions, fostering creativity and facilitating meaningful social engagement. * Weidong Liu, School of Humanities, Wenzhou University, China * In Writing and Healthcare: Creative and Critical Approaches, Janelle Adsit offers helpful resources for those not only in writing or health professions, but also those allied across family and community health, health humanities, arts in medicine, global public health, and more-using critical and thoughtful pedagogies to address health's wholistic nature alongside the urgency to address global health inequities. Learners and teachers along a spectrum will benefit from this book, allowing sincere dialogue to occur across disciplines, geographies, institutions, and communities, toward more inclusive understandings of healing and its related professions. * Robin M. McCrary, Associate Teaching Professor, Syracuse University, USA *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
10 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
602 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-41707-6 (9781350417076)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Janelle Adsit is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, USA. She is editor of the anthology Critical Creative Writing; co-author of Writing Intersectional Identities; and author of Toward an Inclusive Creative Writing (Bloomsbury, 2019). She also has written a book of poems titled Unremitting Entrance (2015). In the community and with her local Hospice, Adsit co-facilitates writing workshops that address stress, pain, and grief. As an extension of these workshops, Adsit's research is located within the fields of Arts in Health and Narrative Medicine.
Content
Acknowledgments
A Note for Instructors: The Place of Health Care in the Creative Writing Curriculum
How to Use This Book
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Relationships Between Writing and Health
Chapter 2 - Narrative Medicine and Other Health-Related Arts
Chapter 3 - Praxis: Key Concepts & Practices
Chapter 4 - Bodies of Writing - and Writing the Body
Chapter 5 - Writing for Social Change
Chapter 6 - Considerations and Craft
Chapter 7 - Writing Groups
Chapter 8 - Pausing Here
Appendices - Additional Resources
Selected Bibliography and Reading List
Employment Opportunities at the Intersection of Arts and Health Care
Organizations to Know
Sample Syllabi
Sample Handouts
Index
A Note for Instructors: The Place of Health Care in the Creative Writing Curriculum
How to Use This Book
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Relationships Between Writing and Health
Chapter 2 - Narrative Medicine and Other Health-Related Arts
Chapter 3 - Praxis: Key Concepts & Practices
Chapter 4 - Bodies of Writing - and Writing the Body
Chapter 5 - Writing for Social Change
Chapter 6 - Considerations and Craft
Chapter 7 - Writing Groups
Chapter 8 - Pausing Here
Appendices - Additional Resources
Selected Bibliography and Reading List
Employment Opportunities at the Intersection of Arts and Health Care
Organizations to Know
Sample Syllabi
Sample Handouts
Index