scholarly journals COVID Cough and Fukushima Novels

Prism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-284
Author(s):  
Margherita Long

Abstract This essay introduces three works of post-Fukushima Japanese literature, by Hayashi Kyoko (1930–2017), Kimura Yusuke (1970–) and Kobayashi Erika (1978–), to offer an environmental humanities alternative to Giorgio Agamben's response to COVID-19. Politically, Hayashi is probably closest to Agamben in that her work has been embraced by antinuclear activists in Japan and upheld as evidence of the injustice of the state of exception into which victims of both Fukushima and Hiroshima/Nagasaki were thrust. The author focuses instead on how these three authors acknowledge the cruelties of biopolitics but nevertheless celebrate the fact that “life” is never bare. For them, ionizing radiation acts like the COVID cough did for many of us: not as an invitation to critique the state but as a material intrusion that forces an awareness of what Rocco Ronchi, in his response to Agamben, called “the destiny of the community of man with nature.” What are the material forces immanent to that destiny? What does it do to our mental health to engage them directly? The three works analyzed answer these questions in creative, powerful ways.

Author(s):  
Victoria Ruzhenkova ◽  
Irina Sheremet’eva ◽  
Viktor Ruzhenkov

Stress negatively affects the mental health of students, causes anxiety and depression, leads to poor academic performance, lowers level of professional training and success in the future. The purpose of the research is to study the state of mental health of medical students to develop recommendations for the prevention of maladaptation. Materials and methods. 252 5-year students aged 20–29 (22 ± 1,1) years, 168 (66,7 %) females and 84 (33,3 %) males (137 students of Belgorod State University and 115 of Altay State Medical University (ASMU)) were examined by medico-sociological and psychometric methods. Results. It was established that every fifth student of the Belgorod State University and every third of the ASMU did not enter the medical university on their own initiative. Less than half (43 %) of Belgorod State University students and 30.4 % of the ASMU ones are convinced that the choice of profession was correct, 35 and 37.4 % are, consequently, completely disappointed with it. Students of Belgorod State University dealt with training stress factors poorer and, as a result, have more pronounced mental symptoms of training stress, difficulties in organizing the daily regimen, irregular nutrition, and fear of the future. Regardless of the region of studying, the number of students not committed to the medical profession, after 5 years of study, is more than 3 times higher among those who enter the university not on their own initiative. Students of the ASMU hit substances, skipped classes, played computer games and took sedative drugs more often to overcome academic stress. The degree of anxiety before the exams in students of Belgorod State University was higher (9 points) than in their peers from the State Medical University (7 points). An extremely high (8–10 points) level of anxiety before exams was characteristic of 75,9 and 44,3 % of students, respectively. The former were more likely to experience clinically significant panic attacks: 27,7 and 6,1 %. Conclusion. Given the high incidence of social phobia (19,1–24,1 %), depression (22,6–32,2 %) and anxiety (21,9– 27,8 %) among medical students, the development and implementation of psycho-correctional programs aimed at the formation of adaptive ways to overcome stress, reduce anxiety and depression is required. This will prevent the development of psychosomatic disorders and addictions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
J Joseph ◽  
H Sankar ◽  
D Nambiar

Abstract The fourth target of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 advocates for the promotion of mental health and wellbeing. The Indian state of Kerala is recognized for its gains in health and development but has substantial burden of mental health ailments. Historical analysis is vital to understand the pattern of mental health morbidity. The current study focusses on comparable estimates available from three largescale population-based surveys in India to explore trends in prevalence of mental health disorders over the years and map resources and infrastructure available for mental health care in Kerala. We undertook a secondary analysis of national demographic surveys from 2002 to 2018 which reported information on mental health and availability of health infrastructure and human resources. Data were collated and descriptive analyses were conducted. We compared the national and state level estimates over the years to study the trend in the prevalence of mental health disability. The prevalence of mental retardation and intellectual disability in Kerala increased from 194 per hundred thousand persons in 2002 to 300 per hundred thousand persons in 2018, two times higher to the national average. The prevalence of mental illness increased from 272 per hundred thousand people to 400 per hundred thousand people in sixteen years. The prevalence was higher among males (statistical significance was not indicated) in mental illness and mental retardation. 2018 data showed that the public sector had 0.01 hospitals and 5.53 beds per hundred thousand persons available for mental health treatment. Results showed a substantial increase in mental health illness over the 16-year study period that has affected males and females, as well as all social classes of the state. The current health infrastructure and human resources in the public sector of the state are inadequate to meet the current burden of the problem and to ensure universal access to care for its population. Key messages The trend in prevalence of mental health disorders in the state is increasing across the years. There is a mismatch between the extend of the problem and resources available in public sector.


2021 ◽  
pp. 102975
Author(s):  
Ziyan Xu ◽  
Maximilian Gahr ◽  
Yutao Xiang ◽  
David Kingdon ◽  
Nicolas Rüsch ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
pp. 647-660
Author(s):  
Steed Vernyl Davidson

The task of identifying a single rationale for the violence on display in the book of Jeremiah may end with a coherent answer, but perhaps not a satisfactory one. That violence serves a reforming purpose seems satisfactory to theological readers in search of theodicy, as well trauma analyses that find the violence problematic but understandable. Other interpreters of Jeremiah, such as feminists and postcolonialists, struggle with the gratuitous and seemingly arbitrary nature of the violence. While not an attempt to rationalize the violence, this chapter engages the arbitrariness of the violence through a systematic analysis of four targets of violence in the book of Jeremiah: the prophet, the feminized Israel/Judah as adulterous wife, foreign nations, and the earth. By distinguishing these separate targets, the chapter examines how gender, sexuality, nationality, and speciesism intersect in the enactment of the rhetorical violence in the book. These delineations also set the stage for a central claim of the chapter, that of exceptional violence. Building upon Carl Schmidt’s notion that exceptional violence stems from exceptional vulnerability that requires the state of exception to use unrestrained violence, the chapter considers how the violence as narrated in Jeremiah not only performs this exceptionalism but also has exceptions. By examining who/what dies from the violence in the book, the chapter points out how the politics of death is played out upon different targets.


Author(s):  
José Duke S. Bagulaya

Abstract This article argues that international law and the literature of civil war, specifically the narratives from the Philippine communist insurgency, present two visions of the child. On the one hand, international law constructs a child that is individual and vulnerable, a victim of violence trapped between the contending parties. Hence, the child is a person who needs to be insulated from the brutality of the civil war. On the other hand, the article reads Filipino writer Kris Montañez’s stories as revolutionary tales that present a rational child, a literary resolution of the dilemmas of a minor’s participation in the world’s longest-running communist insurgency. Indeed, the short narratives collected in Kabanbanuagan (Youth) reveal a tension between a minor’s right to resist in the context of the people’s war and the juridical right to be insulated from the violence. As their youthful bodies are thrown into the world of the state of exception, violence forces children to make the choice of active participation in the hostilities by symbolically and literally assuming the roles played by their elders in the narrative. The article concludes that while this narrative resolution appears to offer a realistic representation and closure, what it proffers is actually a utopian vision that is in tension with international law’s own utopian vision of children. Thus, international law and the stories of youth in Kabanbanuagan provide a powerful critique of each other’s utopian visions.


Author(s):  
Esther J. Calzada ◽  
Lauren E. Gulbas ◽  
Carolina Hausmann-Stabile ◽  
Su Yeong Kim ◽  
Jodi Berger Cardoso

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