Health humanities

Health humanities refers to the application of humanities disciplines (arts, literature, languages, law, history, philosophy, religion, etc.) to discourse about, expression of, and/or the promotion of the dimensions of human health and well being. This applied capacity of the humanities is not itself a novel idea however the construct of the health humanities has only recently begun to emerge over the first decade of the 21st Century.

In the health humanities, health (and the promotion of health) is understood according to the constructivist (and other non-positivist) principles indigenous to the humanities, as opposed to the positivism of science. The health humanities do not serve to replace the health sciences, but rather offer a contrasting paradigm and pragmatic approach with respect to health and its promotion. In large part, their foundations are grounded historically in the medical humanities,. The health humanities construct is distinct from complementary and alternative medicine, which essentially consists of non-conventional interventions, applied within a conventional health sciences paradigm.

The health humanities are a growing movement internationally. The website of the International Health Humanities Network can be found at http://www.healthhumanities.org. A conference on the health humanities was held October 13–15, 2006, at Green College, University of British Columbia. The conference was co-organized by Judy Segal (UBC English) and Alan Richardson (UBC Philosophy) and featured presentations by Jacalyn Duffin, Carl Elliott, Sander Gilman, Ian Hacking, Nicholas King, Lorelei Lingard, Robert Proctor, Susan Squier, Andrea Tone, and Kathleen Woodward. In January 2009, Paul Crawford became the world's first Professor of Health Humanities at The University of Nottingham, and with Dr Victoria Tischler, Charley Baker, Dr Brian Brown, Dr Lisa Mooney-Smith and Professor Ronald Carter created an international health humanities initiative that included the AHRC-funded International Health Humanities Conference (IHHC). A key article on "Health Humanities: The future of Medical Humanities" (Crawford, Brown, Tischler, & Baker, 2010) has been published in the Mental Health Review Journal.

The 1st IHH conference was held on August 6–8, 2010, at The University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. The conference opened with Professor Crawford's address entitled ‘Health humanities: Literature and Madness’ and included keynote lectures by Professor Kay Redfield Jamison and Professor Elaine Showalter. Mark A. Radcliffe, who also spoke at the conference, reported on 'health humanities' in his weekly column for the Nursing Times. The conference was also reported in the Bethlem Blog. The 2nd IHH conference was hosted in the USA, 9–11 August 2012, at Montclair State University in New Jersey, with the theme of "Music, Health, and Humanity." The 3rd IHH conference will be held once again at the University of Nottingham, and will feature the theme of "Traumatextualities: Trauma in the Clinical, Arts and Humanities Contexts."