Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: psychiatry psychology

  • W.H.R. Rivers and the humane treatment of shell shock

    Soleil ShahLondon, UK “Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.” – Hippocrates War neurosis, or “shell shock” as it was referred to in the twentieth century, could be considered the signature injury of World War I. These disorders involved nervous ailments with no apparent organic lesion. Symptoms included…

  • The Montreal Experiments: Brainwashing and the ethics of psychiatric experimentation

    Shaan BhambraMontreal, Canada “We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”1– George Orwell, 1984 In the aftermath of World War II, the race to become the dominant world power motivated both the United States and the USSR to strive for influence, power, and military strength. In the mid-twentieth century, the brewing Cold War…

  • “I’m really bad with numbers”: Using the mini mental status examination among farm workers in rural California

    Bernardo NgImperial County, California, United States In 1975, Dr. Marshal F. Folstein and his colleagues at Tufts University published the seminal paper “Mini-mental state. A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician.”1 Since then, this test has been widely used by clinicians both to screen for cognitive deficits when a…

  • Of men and brains and rats

    Observers of the affairs of man in an age of mass destruction weaponry have long worried about the future of the human race. Why do men so often make erroneous decisions and act in ways detrimental to their interests and even to their survival? Is not Homo sapiens the epitome of millions of years of…

  • No laughing matter

    Shafiqah Samarasam Subang Jaya, Malaysia “You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” These were the words of Robin Williams, the man whose own laughter was enough to make us laugh. In a world where tragedy occurs every day, his words helped us to understand the poignant meaning behind it. “Comedian”…

  • The York Retreat

    Beninio McDonough-TranzaLondon, United Kingdom On 15 March 1790 Hannah Mills, a recently widowed young woman suffering from “melancholy,” was admitted to York Asylum. Less than one month later, on April 29, Hannah died, isolated and alone, her friends and family having been refused permission to visit her. The death of a patient in such circumstances…

  • The journey into the blue

    Annette TuffsHeidelberg, Germany “And when I came back – I did not return. You are never the same person you were, when you left.” Thus wrote Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) in 1946, in the newspaper Badische Zeitung in Freiburg,1 a few months after ending his forced absence of twelve years in France and California. The German…

  • The legacy of Mercy Street Seekers

    Ananya MahapatraNew Delhi, India “In my dream, drilling into the marrow of my entire bone, my real dream, I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill searching for a street sign – namely MERCY STREET. Not there.” —Anne Sexton1 In October 1974, Anne Sexton, the American poet famous for her signature style confessional poetry, committed suicide.…

  • Six years and counting

    Libanos ReddaSeattle, Washington, United States For the past six years, I have not been myself. Then again, the memory of my former self has grown a bit foggy over the years. Perhaps things were always this bad. Perhaps I have not changed much at all. Around six years ago, at the age of seventeen, my…

  • Mental health in Michel Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic and the limits of medical positivism

    Taylor TsoSt. Louis, Missouri, United States In The Birth of the Clinic, Michel Foucault traces the history of our present-day understanding of disease. One of the most significant and more recent problems this understanding had to confront was the pre-nineteenth century outlook that “neuroses and essential fevers were fairly generally regarded as diseases without organic…