Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: depression

  • The doctor behind the labcoat

    Varun Raj Passi Bangalore, India   “Sanjeev’s Phantasms” by Chetna VM. Sanjeev knew he was not asleep, and the very fact that he was conscious enough to know this made him worry. The relentless clicking of the wall-clock above his bedstead amplified his anxiety. He knew that the more clicks he registered now, the less…

  • Was Moses an alchemist?

    S.E.S. Medina Benbrook, Texas, United States   Worshiping the golden calf, as in Exodus 32:1-35. Illustration from a Bible card published 1901 by the Providence Lithograph Company. Via Wikimedia. “And he took the (golden) calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it upon the…

  • Past, present, and future of psychedelic medicine

    Jennifer Keehn Baja California, Mexico   Photo by Merlin Lightpainting from Pexels While there are now more clinical trials than ever before on the therapeutic applications of psychedelics, the medicinal use of such substances is not new. Indigenous cultures worldwide have used plants, roots, vines, and fungi that produce altered states of consciousness in healing rituals…

  • When daydreaming becomes a problem

    S.T Gamage Colombo, Sri Lanka   Where the thoughts live by Marija Tiurina. Published with permission. “They say there’s no harm in daydreaming, but there is.” — Charlaine Harris   An excessive amount of daydreaming can lead to a psychological condition called maladaptive daydreaming (MD). It is also known as daydreaming disorder. Professor Eliezer Somer…

  • Queen Juana: The mad or the betrayed?

    Juliana Menegakis London, United Kingdom   Juana I de Castilla, ca. 1500 Master of Affligem. Museo Nacional de Escultura. Via Wikimedia. Juana of Castile is known by her epithet “the Mad.” But was she truly insane? Infanta Juana of Castile and Aragon was born in 1479 to Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of…

  • My health care crisis

    Yessenia GutiérrezMiami, Florida, United States “Mom, will it hurt?” These were the first words that came out of my mouth the day after my kidneys stopped working. The day after I found out that I had kidney failure and had to get a fistula in my arm for dialysis. I was very afraid because I…

  • Mindfulness meditation as psychotherapy

    Migel Jayasinghe UK This article was previously published by the author between the years of 2006 and 2018. The original publisher has since been lost and the article edited and republished by Hektoen International staff. Other appearances of this text elsewhere on the internet may be unauthorized.   Art by Tushara Jayasinghe. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is…

  • Homeopathy: medicine or placebo?

    Shrestha Saraf Sutton Coldfield, UK Sudarshan Ramachandran Birmingham, UK   Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann. Mezzotint by R. Woodman after G. E. Hering. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark Homeopathy, based on a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine, was developed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann around 1790. The primary principle of homeopathy is “like cures like,” i.e.,…

  • Viktor Frankl: the meaning of a life

    Anne Jacobson Oak Park, Illinois, United States   Figure 1. Viktor Frankl, 1965. Photo by Prof. Dr. Franz Vesely via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0 DE. Not long before the Dachau concentration camp was liberated in April 1945, Viktor Emil Frankl was seriously ill with typhus and writing feverishly on stolen scraps of paper, determined to…

  • Pursuing “conclusions infinite”: The divine inspiration of Georg Cantor

    Sylvia Karasu New York, New York, United States Georg Cantor, German mathematician, 1845–1918. Cantor as an older man, date unknown. Cantor was not quite age 73 when he died of heart failure. Photo Credit: Colport/Alamy Stock Photo. Used with permission. There is a “fine line between brilliance and madness”: the distinction, for example, between a…