Health Humanities and Nature based therapies: Home

The health humanities reflect the profound and deep connection between the humanities- study of the human condition and understanding the human experience- and healthcare.  Why is this connection so significant? 

Because bodily health- ease and dis-ease- places people in positions of unique uncertainty, fear, joy.  They come to the hospital or doctor's office or clinic at their most vulnerable and sometimes frightened.  They share with healthcare providers moments and truths they may not discuss with anyone else: they face life's beginnings and endings and try to make meaning of why there is suffering, and why they have become sick.  In general, the humanities are the way in which people make meaning of living and dying, and everything in between. The health humanities focus more specifically on the meaning of illness and wholeness.  A working definition can be found at NYU's Literature Arts Medicine datebase, "We define the term "medical humanities" broadly to include an interdisciplinary field of humanities (literature, philosophy, ethics, history and religion), social science (anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, sociology), and the arts (literature, theater, film, multimedia and visual arts) and their application to healthcare education and practice. The humanities and arts provide insight into the human condition, suffering, personhood, and our responsibility to each other. They also offer a historical perspective on healthcare. Attention to literature and the arts helps to develop and nurture skills of observation, analysis, empathy, and self-reflection -- skills that are essential for humane healthcare. The social sciences help us to understand how bioscience and medicine take place within cultural and social contexts and how culture interacts with the individual experience of illness and the way healthcare is practiced. while narrative and analysis also can help healthcare providers understand what patients are experiencing."  

To this definition we add the component of the humanities, particularly the arts, that actively promotes health and well being and is an essential component of public health outreach and education.  It also includes individual arts practices and hospital arts in medicine programs.

Finally, we use the term "health humanities" to include all aspects of health and illness and all types of healthcare providers.