The Illness Narratives : Suffering, Healing, And The Human Condition

Western medicine treats sick patients like broken machines -- figure out what is physically wrong, fix it, and send the patient on their way.But humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary.Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones. It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did not.Based on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring. Before Being Mortal or The Body Keeps the Score, there was The Illness Narratives.It remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.