Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: gun violence

  • Understanding so little: Cinema and mass shootings

    Eelco WijdicksRochester, Minnesota, United States The horrific 2012 shooting in Aurora, Colorado, during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, was serendipitously preceded by a trailer for Gangster Squad, which showed a fictitious shooting of a movie theater audience. Filmmakers have revisited the topic of mass shootings and their aftermath in portrayals not only of…

  • In search of Cassandra

    Charles KelsSan Antonio, Texas, United States “Psychiatrists are [not] always wrong with respect to future dangerousness, only most of the time.”– Barefoot v Estelle, 463 US 880 (1983) My wife is the smartest person I know, but she is not, to the best of my knowledge, omniscient. This qualification would be unnecessary had she not…

  • What could have been

    Gordon SunDowney, California, United States Every year, there are 400 stories like these. The second-year medical student. The social butterfly of her 106 classmates, yet her bubbly personality masks the loneliness of living on one coast after spending the first twenty-five years of her life on the other coast. The isolation is amplified by the…