scholarly journals Storytelling and poetry in the time of coronavirus

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 278-282
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Barrett ◽  
Melissa Dickson ◽  
Clare Hayes-Brady ◽  
Harriet Wheelock
Keyword(s):  
Group Work ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
National Study ◽  
Patient History ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Hospital Doctors ◽  
Balint Group

The coronavirus crisis occurs at a time when many clinicians have already experienced burnout. One in three Irish doctors were suffering from burnout in the 2019 National Study of Wellbeing of Hospital Doctors in Ireland; rates are also high in Irish Psychiatry. We present a perspective on the use of narrative in medicine and recognise that storytelling, and the patient history are very much at the heart of medicine. Clinician storytelling, such as Schwartz Rounds and Balint group work, has very much come to the fore in Irish Psychiatry and in training. Projects such as MindReading have explored overlaps between clinicians, humanities experts and experts by experience. We give an overview of some approaches from the movement around narrative in medicine to bolster this. We explore why clinicians write as ways to support identification, catharsis and a way to process experiences. Clinicians and patients may also use literature and poetry to promote coping. The historical context and practical strategies are highlighted, particularly with reference to poetry use during the current crisis.

scholarly journals Online Balint Group Work Versus Pharmacotherapy in Treatment of Coronavirus Anxiety in Healthcare Workers in Iran: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
najmeh shahini ◽  
shakiba gholamzad ◽  
zanireh salimi ◽  
Mansoureh Kiani Dehkordi ◽  
Saeedeh Hajebi Khaniki ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Group Work ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Intervention Period ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Resilience Scale ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Balint Group ◽  
Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract Background: An increase in symptoms of anxiety is already being reported in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.Objectives: We aimed to compare the effectiveness of Balint group work with pharmacotherapy in coronavirus related anxiety among healthcare workers (HCWs) in Iran.Methods: In This pilot clinical trial, after passing a phone screening procedure by a psychiatrist, subjects were quasi-randomly assigned to Balint (8 sixty-minute online sessions) or pharmacotherapy (Sertraline) groups. Both groups were asked to fill two questionnaires, including the Corona Disease Anxiety Scale (CDAS) and Connor-Davidson resilience scale (CD-RISC), at the beginning and the end of the 4-week intervention period.Results: A total of 45 HCWs enrolled in this study. The results showed a significant difference between the post-test and pre-test scores of both groups in the total scores of anxiety and its subcomponents (p≤0.001). There was no significant difference between the effectiveness of the two interventions on anxiety (p=0.52). Both interventions had a significant effect on the subjects' resilience and its subscales (p≤0.05) except for positive acceptance change. The spiritual influences domain had a significantly higher increase in the pharmacotherapy group (P=0.031).Conclusions: We showed Balint group work maybe can better to pharmacotherapy with Sertraline in management of COVID-19 related anxiety and boosting resilience in healthcare workers.

scholarly journals An established practice in new surroundings: concepts, challenges, pitfalls and guidelines for NCHD Balint Groups

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Douglas ◽  
L. Feeney
Keyword(s):  
General Practice ◽  
Group Work ◽  
Group Leader ◽  
Balint Groups ◽  
The Face ◽  
Hospital Doctors

Balint groups are now mandatory for psychiatry trainees. Balint groups have been in existence in General Practice for several decades. Providing Balint groups for Psychiatry Non Consultant Hospital Doctors brings with it challenges for the group leader and participants. Many of these challenges are common place in any form of group work, while others are unique to this cohort. This article describes these challenges. Guidelines which offer the the group the best chance of success, in the face of these common challenges, are discussed.

scholarly journals Recommendations to reduce inequalities for LGBT people facing advanced illness: ACCESSCare national qualitative interview study

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Bristowe ◽  
Matthew Hodson ◽  
Bee Wee ◽  
Kathryn Almack ◽  
Katherine Johnson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Service Level ◽  
National Study ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Advanced Illness ◽  
Qualitative Interview Study ◽  
Lgbt People

Background: Lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or trans (LGBT) people have higher risk of certain life-limiting illnesses and unmet needs in advanced illness and bereavement. ACCESSCare is the first national study to examine in depth the experiences of LGBT people facing advanced illness. Aim: To explore health-care experiences of LGBT people facing advanced illness to elicit views regarding sharing identity (sexual orientation/gender history), accessing services, discrimination/exclusion and best-practice examples. Design: Semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviews analysed using thematic analysis. Setting/participants: In total, 40 LGBT people from across the United Kingdom facing advanced illness: cancer ( n = 21), non-cancer ( n = 16) and both a cancer and a non-cancer conditions ( n = 3). Results: In total, five main themes emerged: (1) person-centred care needs that may require additional/different consideration for LGBT people (including different social support structures and additional legal concerns), (2) service level or interactional (created in the consultation) barriers/stressors (including heteronormative assumptions and homophobic/transphobic behaviours), (3) invisible barriers/stressors (including the historical context of pathology/criminalisation, fears and experiences of discrimination) and (4) service level or interactional facilitators (including acknowledging and including partners in critical discussions). These all shape (5) individuals’ preferences for disclosing identity. Prior experiences of discrimination or violence, in response to disclosure, were carried into future care interactions and heightened with the frailty of advanced illness. Conclusion: Despite recent legislative change, experiences of discrimination and exclusion in health care persist for LGBT people. Ten recommendations, for health-care professionals and services/institutions, are made from the data. These are simple, low cost and offer potential gains in access to, and outcomes of, care for LGBT people.

The Effects of the Balint Group on its Members and Leader

1972 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Konrad Knoepfel
Keyword(s):  
Medical Treatment ◽  
Group Work ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Family Doctor ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Considerable Saving ◽  
The Family ◽  
Heavy Burden ◽  
Balint Group ◽  
Group Experience

Balint's work promotes better psychological and medical treatment of many so-called “problem patients.” With understanding, these patients often lose the characteristic of being a heavy burden and even become interesting and gratifying. Time invested at the beginning phase of treatment often brings considerable saving of time over extended periods. The doctor's need for intensive involvement diminishes and psychological emergencies become less frequent. Balint helped to make these goals possible by teaching psychoanalytic principles in a simple way, talking in clear, comprehensible language and creating for physicians the possibility for emotional experience and growth through group work. Such experience is indispensable for the training of the family doctor. This paper summarizes essential elements of the group work, in which the leader profits as well as the family doctor. The leader has to learn to formulate clinical experience in clear, non-technical language which describes how patients are treated in the practice of hospital and office medicine. The group experience, furthermore, helps the physician to develop his capacity for empathy by better understanding himself.

THE PRINCIPLE OF SOLIDARITY WITHIN THE ITALIAN CONSTITUTION AND THE EUROPEAN MIGRANT PROBLEM

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
Gabriella Mangione
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Full Resolution ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Charter Of Fundamental Rights ◽  
Italian Constitution

Having been enshrined in the principal European constitutions after the devastation of the Second World War, with the adoption of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the subsequent Lisbon Treaty, the term solidarity has taken on central importance also within the new constitutional and institutional framework of the European Union. The Italian republican Constitution asserts the principle of solidarity in a particularly evident manner and marks one of the clearest instances and one of the most strongly enshrined manifestations of the principle within Europe. It is within the historical context that the numerous and precise references - both explicit and implicit - to the vocation of solidarity inherent within the Italian Constitution, must be placed and construed. However, the centrality and pervasive manner in which this watchword of the contemporary political and legal lexicon is used takes on a particular depth in the light of the immense tragedy of the migrants who are daily knocking on the doors of Europe, and which has had a profound effect on the Old Continent. It has been pointed out in this regard from various quarters that it would be appropriate to introduce a binding requirement of solidarity between European governments. The awareness that the full resolution of this crisis will require a profound transformation of the institutional structure of the Union is in fact no longer a prerogative solely of progressive political forces: although the predominant characteristic element of the Union is the economic one, the argument that the Union can only survive the current crisis and prosper if it moves swiftly towards political union is attracting an increasing number of supporters in Italy. And yet, in the words of one of the founding fathers, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, cooperation between European peoples cannot remain an economic and technical affair. It is necessary to give it a soul. Europe will live insofar as it will have conscience of itself.

Labor and Capital in the Current Crisis

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-219
Author(s):  
Adrián Sotelo Valencia
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Average Growth ◽  
Economic Production ◽  
Fictitious Capital ◽  
Further Development

The supremacy of fictitious capital together with the contraction of average growth rates and the global economic production system have plunged capitalism into severe crisis. The crisis is not simply a contradiction between real and speculative economies, as these are merely manifestations of the difficulties that confront productive expansion and the valuation of capital. At this point, timid state intervention and exchange rate regulation are insufficient policies to calm the profound crisis being experienced by Europe and the United States. While it may not spell the end of the capitalist system, it does mark depletion of its progressive phase and its capacity to sustain further development of the productive forces. This signifies a contradictory phase of structural stagnation as the planet’s natural resources and ecological systems become incorporated into a massive chain of exploitation, thus redefining the historical context in which the global working class must organize and struggle.

scholarly journals No Space. Nowhere. Refugees and the Problem of Human Rights in Arendt and Ricœur.

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-45
Author(s):  
Hille Haker
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
The Will ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Right

In the wake of the recent global refugee and migration crisis, Hannah Arendt’s defense of the right to have political rights has become prominent again. Her work is read as an early reminder that the internationally promoted human rights regime may be merely a rhetorical reference, without the will or international authority for political action. I examine Arendt’s analysis in its historical context and then turn to consider Ricœur’s understanding of human rights. The capability to respond to and to be held accountable by others marks Ricœur’s ethics of responsibility. He agrees with Arendt that legal authority must rest upon power (Macht) and not domination (Herrschaft), but he insists that the undercurrent of common power is the moral capability of an agent. The essay examines the ramifications of Ricœur’s ethics for the current crisis of refugees and migration, and it argues that he offers, at the same time, a correction useful for the ethical foundation of human rights.

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