SESSION 2

SHANTHALA HEGDE
CAN THERE BE ANY HEALING WITHOUT EMPATHY?

Empathy is the ability to share the feelings of others. It is an important component of our emotional and social lives. Any healing process requires intense dialogues between the individual seeking help and the individual providing the help. Without the genuine connection between individuals, true communication, treatment or any healing process would fail at some point. The ability to empathise and intensity of this felt emotion may have individual differences and often may play a role in determining the level of occupational burnout in health professionals, especially in mental health professionals. Empathy for instance is a core component in psychotherapeutic alliance between patients and the therapist. The concept of empathy has been a topic of intense discussion and debate by philosophers to behavioural scientists. Recent neuroscientific studies are not only exploring the neural basis of empathy but also examining how experience of empathy can be modulated by engaging motivational systems or by cognitive control circuits in the brain. Interesting work in the area of neuromusicology and music therapy is examining how external stimulation such as music can alter and modulate the experience of empathy in the context of therapist-client interactions. In this lecture, I will dwell upon this concept further and highlight the need for health professionals to focus on the role of empathy in humanising the process of treatment and healing.

TITHI BHATNAGAR
FROM DISTRESS TO WELL-BEING: INSIGHTS FROM POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Positive Psychology is the science of leading a rewarding and fulfilling life. It entails the important science of Subjective Well-Being (SWB) that explores the full range of psychological well-being in a way that focuses on factors that keep one from being depressed and lead one to become happier. In a seminal research paper, Myers and Diener (1995) found that Psychological articles researching negative states outnumbered those examining positive states by a ratio of 17 to 1. Researchers also agree that the absence of ill-health or negative affect will not generate as much happiness and satisfaction as will generate a positive affect. The present talk begins by highlighting the emergence of the Positive Psychology movement and offers very briefly the historical, theoretical, and philosophical underpinnings of Positive Psychology. A brief overview of the discipline of Positive Psychology and the paradigm, traditions and frameworks of well-being will be discussed from a cross-cultural perspective (Eastern and Western perspectives). The concepts of flourishing and positive human health will be discussed further along with the concepts of hope, optimism, wisdom, gratitude, spirituality, meaning, and others from the field of Positive Psychology. The talk will highlight the relationship between the two concepts of Psychological Well-being and Psychological Distress and emphasize the importance and effectiveness of promoting positive functioning through various interventions. The significance of Positive Psychology concepts in the realm of health will be discussed, with a special focus on the concept of post-traumatic growth being addressed in light of adapting positively to life adversities – how do people deal with a health crisis and maintain a sense of well-being. The talk will conclude by emphasizing the implications of Positive Psychology for health and well-being.

SESSION 3

SAURABH TODARIYA
DISORIENTATION AND NARRATIVE: TOWARDS THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ILLNESS

Most of the studies on health centers on the third-person, scientific/objective understanding of illness which ignores the subjective, experiential dimension of it. This paper will explore the phenomenological account of the illness interpreting it as the feeling of disequilibrium and not being-at-home. The paper argues that the experience of illness can be interpreted as the disorienting experience for the embodied subject who encounters the world as affordances. Hence, the illness is experienced as the loss of the affordances for the embodied subject. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the lived space, we will argue that experience of illness makes it difficult for the embodied subject to cope up with the environment and the world no longer experienced as the horizon of possibilities. Hence, the experience of illness is fundamentally experienced as disorientation where the embodied subject is unable to orient its activities and realize its goals with respect to the future. The inability to experience the future as the horizon of possibilities results in the disruption of narrative coherence for the experiencing subject. We will show that the experience of disorientation during illness manifests itself at the intersubjective level as the inability to form coherent narrative. According to Ricouer, self is basically the time experienced in the form of narratives or the stories we tell ourselves. However, the experience of Illness as disorientation disrupts our ability to form coherent narratives and result in the loss of subjective well-being.

Keywords: Illness, Disorientation, Embodied subject, Narrativity

MĀRA GRĪNFELDE
HEALING AT A DISTANCE: PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PATIENT-PHYSICIAN RELATIONSHIP IN TELECONSULTATION

The global crisis of Covid-19 pandemic has considerably accelerated the use of the teleconsultation (consultation between the patient and the doctor via video platforms). Taking into account its widespread use, it is important to consider what kind of impact this form of clinical interaction has on the quality of care. Does it contribute to the quality of care crisis in medicine, in which patients perceive physicians as not sufficiently empathic towards their suffering? In the tradition of phenomenology of medicine this quality of care crisis has been said to stem from the physician’s exclusive focus on the patient as a mere physical body needed to be fixed (Toombs 1992; Carel 2016; Svenaeus 2021), which leads to the objectification of the patient as a disease entity and the accompanying feelings of alienation and the loss of agency on the part of the patient. In my lecture I will consider if teleconsultation contributes to the objectification of the patient and what kind of potential impact it has on the patient-physician relationship and the quality of care. I will approach this issue from the phenomenological perspective combining both insights from the phenomenological tradition (concepts of the lived body and object body) and the results of my phenomenologically informed qualitative research study of the patient experience of teleconsultation, using “Phenomenologically Grounded Qualitative Research” methodology (Køster Fernandez, 2021). I will argue that, surprisingly, it is the patient’s lived body and not the object body which is at the center of teleconsultation, leading to the increased sense of patient’s agency (control and responsibility) and the transformation of the asymmetrical patient-physician relationship, opening up the possibility for more empathetic clinical relationship.

This work is prepared within Postdoctoral research project “Healing at a distance: phenomenological analysis of patient experience of clinical encounter in telemedicine” (1.1.1.2/VIAA/4/20/622).

SESSION 4

MANINDRA THAKUR
EXPERIENCING INSTITUTIONS OF MODERN MEDICINE – AN AUTO-ETHNOGRAPHY

This paper intends to reflect upon my personal experiences of being in three different hospitals (AIIMS, RML, MAX7) as an attendant and as a patient. These hospitals are concrete forms of a knowledge tradition that operates on the organising principle of Cartesian duality. Human beings are psychologically and physically most vulnerable when the line between life and death is blurred. I have had three such experiences, and fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage with the doctors and fellow travellers philosophically every time. Auto-ethnography makes it possible to reflect upon these experiences and connect the dots between knowledge and practice. This paper will examine the interplay between knowledge, power and the market, which constitute the context of these experiences. The relationship between the patient and doctor is mediated by these variables and produces fear, humiliation and distrust, which are antithetical to healing. The paper will reflect upon Munnabhai MBBS,  a Hindi film that critiques Cartesian duality’s medical consequences. It will also refer to the counter viewpoint reflected in Doctor House, an American serial on this theme.

NAREN RAO
ETHICAL DILEMMAS AND CHALLENGES IN NEUROPSYCHIATRY: A CLINICAL PERSPECTIVE

The recent advances in behavioral science and neuroscience have generated novel insights into human behavior, agency, and judgment that could have profound implications on ethical concepts. The conscious and deliberate choices by an individual may have implicit cognitive processes that can be manipulated, questioning the very concept of free will. The progress in pharmacological and neurostimulation interventions also calls for serious ethical analysis. The interdisciplinary field of neuroethics is at the intersection of neurosciences, radiology, cognitive psychology, philosophy, and law and tries to examine the ethical questions that span across disciplines. The field of neuroethics deals with both the ethics of neuroscience and neuroscience of ethics and their interactions. The clinical diagnosis and treatment of neuropsychiatric diseases pose unique challenges to ethical concepts as they are frequently associated with the questionable mental capacity for rational and moral decision-making. A practicing clinician frequently encounters ethical dilemmas and challenges such as requests for assisted suicide, balancing between patients’ autonomy to refuse treatment, and the collective interest of the society in preventing public harm, research, and treatment of patients with altered consciousness. This talk will discuss some of these ethical dilemmas and challenges using clinical case scenarios from neuropsychiatric practice.

SESSION 5

ARYA SURESH
MENTAL ILLNESS AND GRAPHIC MEDICINE: CRAFTING A VISUAL LANGUAGE OF CRITIQUE

Comics as a hybrid medium combines the power of the word and the animacy of visuals. Graphic medicine, a novel repertoire and an emerging subgenre of comics, thematizes health, illness, body, and caregiving and also annotates the phenomenological reality of an individual’s tryst with a medical condition. Put simply, graphic medicine narrated by the sufferers, healthcare professionals, caregivers, or impassioned onlookers, draws and thus visualizes various illnesses ranging from physical through mental to neuro-degenerative illnesses. As a highly interdisciplinary area of study, graphic medicine interprets health and illness from various humanitarian discursive backgrounds to achieve the predominant objective of humanization of healthcare. To this end, graphic medicine scholarship analyzes the illness conditions from phenomenological, literary, philosophical, and sociological perspectives among many others. By engaging with the relevant theoretical tenets of these various disciplines, graphic medicine scholarship explores illness narratives in graphic form from the marginalized perspectival narrations such as that of a patient or care-giver. The mental illness narratives in graphic medicine are noteworthy for their unique use of metaphors which externalize various mental conditions, for their stated agenda to destigmatize mental disorders as well as for their ability to talk back, critique, or oppose the reductive biomedical discourses and practices. Close reading and annotating various panels from the critically acclaimed graphic medical narratives such as Rachel Lindsay’s Rx (2018), Ellen Forney’s Marbles (2012), and Clem Martini and Olivier Martini’s Bitter Medicine (2010), this presentation elaborates on how graphic medical narratives using various affordances of comics craft an idiosyncratic visual language for narrating mental illness experiences, thus enabling a critique of the extant psychiatric (treatment) practices.

RAJNI MUJRAL
STORYTELLING AND NARRATIVE HEALING IN DISABILITY DISCOURSE

This study examines storytelling and narrative healing as an alternative practice of healing and care in the discourse on disability. Drawing on the narratives that represent illness and disability in India, the paper discusses that the oral storytelling mode- based on speaker-listener association becomes an alternative healing practice that provides care beyond organized help. For this, the study analyses instances from two narratives on disability in India. In Jerry Pinto’s novel Em and the Big Hoom, the character Em feels at home at a government hospital where she could share her experiences with the staff. In Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People, the character named Animal records and shares his experience of being disabled in an abled society. He comes to reconcile his sense of disability by sharing his memoirs. Both the characters deal with the stigma of disability and come to terms with their embodied experiences through the act of storytelling. In a system that provides organized help, storytelling or sharing one’s own experiences becomes a significant but unrecognized method of coming to terms with one’s own self. As one shares one’s experiences with a receptive audience, one realizes one’s own self. Telling one’s story shifts the focus from the visual to the aural and thus provides solace from the oppressing and stigmatizing stares that the disabled feels. The ‘hmm and huu’ of the listener is the alternative care that hospitals fail to provide.  Clinical regulatory practices project forth a discourse of cure for disability and do not give voice to the experiences of the disabled. The study aims to recognize and support storytelling as an alternative healing technique that provides space for the disabled to share their experiences and thereby becomes a mode to spread awareness about their experiences.

Keywords: Illness; narrative healing; storytelling; care; disability

SIDDHU TEKKUR
EMPIRE, DISEASE AND HOME IN MANJULA PADMANABHAN’S PLAY “HARVEST”

Padmanabhan’s literary text ‘Harvest’ depicts the dehumanizing aspect of neocolonialism on  third world human bodies. It shows the medicalization of race and racialization of medicine. The play centers on the theme of organ-selling in India. Almost all the characters come under the control of the rich people of the First World countries, except for Jaya, who towards the end, uses her own body as a form of resistance. In the context of medical humanities, the play has been studied in terms of bio-slavery, biomedical imperialism, commoditization of the third world bodies and technocratic world created by the privileged. This scholarship has paid little attention to the setting of the play in terms of medical geography. I read the play alongside Howell’s concept of “medical moral geography”; Venkat’s theorization of “curative imagination” and Anjuli Fatima’s idea of “disease poetics”which explores the aspects that dehumanizes the colonized and critiques everything from surveillance to data collection and quarantining that seems permissible under the Empire. I focus specifically on how ‘home’ as a space is regulated by the neo-colonial medical regime. In doing so, I argue that we could account for the limitations of ‘medical moral geography’ as being merely about public spaces. Whereas Howell’s theorization of the concept relies on Burton’s encounter of African landscape as a public space, Padmanaban’s depiction of the power relations that regulate the ‘home’ offers us a way to extend Howell’s theorization into supposedly private spaces as well.

Keywords: home, medical moral geography, disease poetics, curative imagination

AMALA POLI
THE GLOBAL SLEEP CRISIS: INTERVENTIONS FROM THE HEALTH HUMANITIES

This talk proposes to examine the current approaches in the health humanities in the context of a global sleep crisis. To realize its claim as an interdisciplinary field, the health humanities must seek to engage with the production of knowledge in disease categories and the public imagination. The field is well situated to question the history of knowledge and the politics of legitimacy that informs modern medicine: what systems and sources of knowledge about the body remain peripheral, othered and outside the domain of formal scientific and diagnostic categories? Discussions about a global sleep crisis have found greater momentum since Covid-19, leading to further opportunities to explore the lack of clarity around sleep disorders. Such a lack of clarity exists due to the muting of the physiological in understanding sleep. Instead, value-laden categories ranging from sleep as absence, dreaming and more recently, sleep as the last line of defense in capitalism have constituted the primary modes of discourse around sleep. To this end, I propose taking up narrative as a source of evidence to argue for a radical reimagination of what constitutes valid knowledge about sleep paralysis. Why sleep paralysis becomes a valuable model for study is its long history of interpretation and imagination through sources that are not constrained by scientific methods, including and not limited to culture-specific terminology, myths, literature, and modern film and television. Broadly, these questions will aim to highlight valuable ways in which the health humanities can engage with sleep paralysis. The study of sleep paralysis will form a model for understanding other parasomnias through narrative.

SESSION 6

GEORG NORTHOFF
THE SELF – A NEUROPHILOSOPHICAL AND NEUROPSYCHIATRIC APPROACH

The self is the core of our human subjectivity which is altered in psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and depression. However, the exact characterization of the self and its changes remain yet unclear. Relying on philosophical definitions and neuroscientific findings, I characterize the self by a point of view within the world which can be characterized in both spatial and temporal features like dynamic and topography. Psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and depression show changes in exactly these spatial topographic and temporal-dynamic features in both their brain and experience which, in turn, reflects an altered point of view within the world leading to abnormal behavior and symptoms.  

ANA LAURA FUNES M.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL CASE FOR MEDICAL PLURALISM: TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL-CROSS-CULTURAL-DIALOGICAL MODEL OF HEALING

Medical pluralism refers to the use of different, sometimes epistemologically divergent, medical systems in the treatment of disease. Historically, medical pluralism has been the norm, especially in cultures of the Global South. However, with the advance in biomedicine and the perception of its efficacy in treating life-threatening conditions, technoscientific treatments in medicine are presented by global institutions as the only and best way to prevent and heal diseases. Prioritizing the objectification of our bodies through ever more detailed monitoring devices, biomedical logic tends to erase the particularity of our bodies by transcribing them into data to treat them as cases.  It monopolizes strategies of public health, minimizing the personal and cultural experience of individuals, as well as ignoring the psychological, social, and environmental aspects of disease and healing. Its authority lies in the idea that it is highly successful in the control or elimination of diseases rather than in the ecological understanding of their appearance or in their holistic treatment. This talk presents the philosophical case for medical pluralism and offers a critique of the type of authority attributed to the alleged success of the biomedical control of our bodies. Drawing from Feyerabend’s political philosophy of science, Gadamer’s hermeneutics of the healing arts, Irigaray’s philosophy of breathing, Sāṃkhya’s philosophy of nature, and the Yogavāsiṣtha’s theory of disease, I offer an ecological-cross-cultural-dialogical model of healing where disease is not constructed as an immediate threat but rather, as an existential questioning to our modes of relating to nature.

SESSION 7

SOPHIE GAUR
THE DISCURSIVE BODY: CONVERSATIONS WITH THE PHYSICAL SELF

This presentation is a sharing of emerging research—explored and extended within the context of a design studio. It addresses  the ways in which we know our bodies through science, myth, intuition and feeling. It questions the ways in which we sense, see, listen and make deep knowledge and meaning of ourselves. Design offers methods to explore these conversations and expand the ways in which we build an epistemic knowing of our bodies.

OM PRAKASH DWIVEDI
WEAK PLANET AND HUMAN VULNERABILITY: THE ECOPRECARIOUS WORLD IN SWARGA

By far the largest biodiversity of the earth is to be found in its soil. The phenomenological dimension of humans’ health and its relationship to soil pervades much of the ancient Indian traditions. Yet, the modern-world’s notion of progress and the attendant negligence towards soil has made it a serious threat to human’s health, even leading to transgenerational trauma, questioning and blurring the notion of planetary habitability. Seen through the lens of the global soil risk, the future of human beings is thus rendered a “psychosocial space of uncertainty.” In this paper, I trace the precarious relationship between soil contamination and human health as represented in Ambikasuthan Mangad’s novel, Swarga (2017). Drawing from Wai Chee Dimock’s conceptualization of “Weak Planet” and Pramod K. Nayar’s notion of “ecoprecarity”, this paper will argue that the engendering of soil risk catalyses the production, structuration and proliferation of a risk society. The contamination of water, soil, and food had embedded trauma in the everyday experience of the natives, resulting in genetic mutations, problematizing healing, and negating the very notion of the elemental forms of biological life as imagined by the medical sciences. Through a turn to the narratives of ecodisaster in Swarga, and questioning the corporate-state nexus, this paper will develop a template of interdependent ecology for the planetary well-being.

Keywords: ecoprecarity, weak planet, Swarga, soil risk, transgenerational trauma, vulnerability, interdependent ecology

SESSION 8

URVAKHSH MEHTA
NEW FRONTIERS IN MENTAL HEALTH CARE AND COMMUNICATION: HOW THE PANDEMIC HAS RESHAPED PSYCHIATRIC PRACTICE

The pandemic has brought about unique challenges in caring for the mentally ill. Besides the fact that the viral infection and its immediate medical and psychosocial sequelae have increased the mental health burden, there is also a new challenge in providing sustained and quality access to care for individuals who have already been seeking help for their mental health difficulties. Moreover, communication is a critical element of psychiatric practice – long hours are spent reviewing history, examining thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, sharing formulations, and providing medical guidance and therapy with individuals seeking help. Social distancing, shortened clinical interviews, the universal use of masks are just a few of the challenges in psychiatric communication. Digital psychiatry, a relatively novel branch of psychiatry until 2019, has witnessed a stratospheric growth in the last few years. Has it been able to bridge this ever increasing communication gap? In this lecture I present the unique scope and challenges of digital psychiatry, telemedicine, video-based consultations, and preliminary neurophysiological data on the similarities and differences in neural responses to virtual and real communication.

SRIVI KALYAN
TOGETHERNESS – REFLECTIVE HEALING THROUGH ART AND DESIGN

“Akth”* – an online project is envisioned as a space of togetherness to build hope and resilience through art and design; a space that is part tribute, and part healing; a space that gives tools for reflection, and gently unfolds the tapestry of life in crisis in all its complex beauty and terribleness so people can find moments of pause, that will enable them to move forward, and care for themselves.  A group of 15 artists, designers and educators who would like to bring our support to everyone in this time of crisis through the healing power that art and design can offer came together in 2021 in the time of the pandemic to envision this space as an online forum, asking ourselves what it meant to be a community.  Death and life, grief and joy are inexplicably entwined in our world, in our humanness and in the way we choose to relate with those whom we love more than ourselves and with random strangers; the way we relate with our pets and with wildlife. At a time when tensions rise, grief and pain pour, anger at the meaninglessness of it all begins to affect everyone, we hope to bring wisdom, discernment, story-making and gentleness through our work and hope it can offer a space for healing and dialogue.

* Akth is currently a work in progress.

 SESSION 9

PUSHYA A GAUTAMA
HUMANIZING HEALTHCARE: INSIGHTS FROM PARAMPARIKA VAIDYAS IN RURAL BENGALURU

Humanization of healthcare is defined as a state of well-being, involving affection, dedication, respect for the other and a consideration of the person as a complete and complex being. Paramparika vaidyam refers to culturally situated diverse healing traditions that are practiced by indigenous healers, also known as paramparika vaidyas. This paper will discuss, using case studies of three paramparika vaidyas in rural Bengaluru, how the notion of healing and well-being is coevolved by the vaidya, and the health-seeker approaching them and the role that their mutually occupied socio-cultural contexts play in such coevolution. It also tentatively explores what insights pertaining to the humanization of contemporary healthcare and education can be drawn from the case studies discussed.

Keywords: paramparika vaidyam, social, cultural, healing, humanization, healthcare

NEHA AGGARWAL
A DIALOGUE-INFORMED APPROACH TOWARDS MEDICAL CARE: AN OVERVIEW OF MENTAL HEALTH PRACTICE

The literature on dehumanization in medical practice reveals various ways of its occurrence such as lack of emotional care, techno-mechanical ways of treating the patient and ignoring the subjectivity and embodiment of the illness. At the epistemological level, the roots of such practices lie dormant in the nature of the medical science that works upon the biomedical model and views a person only as a body. The theory of dialogism by Mikhael Bakhtin views such a practice as morphological, devoid of the polyphonic and dialogic self that a person is. The dialogic theory reveals the tripartite relationship between the doctor, the patient and the illness- Where a sign is objective medical criteria, symptoms offer the scope of subjective interpretation based on the medical professional’s skill and experience, the patient’s context and personhood, the nature of illness as manifested in the patient, and the interaction/ exchange between these three. Using this theory, I present the missing voices of society, culture and embodiment in the dominant discourse of psychiatry and mental health practices that stigmatize a person through labelling and decontextualized diagnosis. In the end, I would also talk about the micro ways in which the medical field is trying to humanize itself and the challenges that it faces in the Indian context.

Keywords: Dehumanization, Psychiatry, mental health practice, Dialogism, social psychology, medical science

SUKANYA G
PLURALISTIC HEALTH CARE APPROACHES OF ADIYAN TRIBE OF WAYANAD DISTRICT, KERALA, INDIA

A society with multiple medical systems with its own practices and beliefs is known as medical pluralism. The study looks into the pluralistic health care approaches of the Adiyan Tribal community of the Wayanad district. As in the case of most indigenous healing traditions, the notion of health and healing amongst the Adiyans cannot be fully understood independent of their unique socio-cultural contexts. Within these, notions pertaining to illness causation play an important role in determining which health care system Adiyans chooses to approach. For instance, there is a belief amongst the Adiyans that when an individual becomes afflicted by a malevolent spirit called pagadhi the resultant illness can only be cured through the performance of a specific ritual, gaddika. The gaddika is performed by a traditional healer known as the kannaladi, alongside which herbal medicines are also given. In contrast, when individuals suffer from diseases such as cancer, members of the tribe prefer to seek biomedical health care. Findings from the fieldwork revealed that many members of the Adiyan community do not prefer biomedical care for most common ailments because it fails to provide culturally meaningful explanations for their illness or its cure. While the current healthcare practices of the Adiyans are undoubtedly diverse, these tend to remain in functionally isolated silos, as demonstrated above. This paper suggests that the pluralistic coexistence of healthcare systems within the Adiyan community cannot be achieved independent of their culturally embedded contexts.

Keywords: Adiyan, plural healthcare, culture, traditional healing, biomedicine

RAKESH KUMAR
THE ECOLOGY OF INDIGENOUS HEALING

Indigenous health management provides a comprehensive framework for maintaining social order as well as physical, spiritual, and cultural well-being. As a result, indigenous people devote a significant amount of time and effort to maintaining their health or preventing and safeguarding themselves from future ill-health. Indigenous people are primarily concerned with avoiding ill-health, and this concern extends to subsistence, social, and cultural practices. The rationales for the prevention of diseases and ill-health include spiritual and moral components, as well as ecology, worldview, and belief system, all of which are intertwined into meaningful rituals. In this paper, the author will discuss why worldview, religious background, cultural belief, and cognitive mechanisms are crucial to indigenous people’s concept of health and healing mechanism.

MEERA KUMAR MENON
APPROACHING THE UNAPPROACHABLE: BODY MIND AND SPIRIT IN MANTRAVADA NARRATIVES

Mantravada often described as sorcery or witchcraft is literally the use of Mantras. In Kerala, the southernmost part of India, Mantravada is practiced as a faith healing ritual to cure various physiological and psychological ailments, and also for other personal reasons such as success in business and relationships. Although a very large number of people approach the practitioners of Mantravada, it is characterized by secrecy and stigma. This talk will look into the exotic and largely unapproachable world of Mantravada faith healing, and explore its philosophy and practice as an indigenous tradition. Challenging the cartesian dichotomy, Mantravada offers an alternative perspective of understanding the mind, body and spirit as a continuum. The focus of this presentation will be on ambiguity in the narratives of Mantravada and the phenomenology of its ritual practices, and how they conjure a unique space of healing. Data collected from field work is scrutinized employing interpretative phenomenological analysis as the research methodology. While traditions such as these are often looked upon as culturally significant, but as making little contribution to the field of medicine, this study will argue that there are some valuable insights to be gained from this alternative faith healing paradigm.

SESSION 10

STEPHEN G. POST
DIGNITY FOR DEEPLY FORGETFUL PEOPLE

The test of medical ethics and compassionate care is seen in tending to individuals with dementia. One might well hear that they are “gone, husks, shells, empty,” and these negative metaphors close them off from the Beloved Community of Humanity. “Dementia” is a term of decline that separates them from us because they lack linear rationality, the reason of “doing” that in western ethics affords them moral status and standing. However, linear reason is morally irrelevant (contra Kant, Locke, etc.,). What matters are 1. consciousness and 2. symbolic rationality, or the reason of who we are as situated in meaningful symbols. These qualities are always there, along with self identity however opaque. This presentation will ask us to notice these aspects of continuing narrative despite the “hypercognitive” bias has excluded deeply forgetful people from equal consideration and compassionate care. Hindu and Buddhist views of mind and identity will be engaged with.  As an epilogue, Dr. Post will briefly describe the goal of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics, with its focus on medical student formation in compassionate care and its recognition with the National Award for Professional Identity Formation bestowed by the US National Medical Honors Society Alpha-Omega-Alpha.

SUDHIR NAIR
CANCER CARE AND RESEARCH – LOOKING BEYOND SURVIVAL OUTCOMES

For many of us who are fortunate enough not to be afflicted by cancer, the purpose of cancer treatment is a single point of cure from the disease. However, for the cancer survivor, though survival is of primordial interest, it is a continuous process with no definite endpoint. Unfortunately, most practitioners of modern medicine ignore this vital facet of the patient’s life. Over the years, the scientific community has designed various measuring instruments like the quality of life to supplement cancer treatment outcome measures to address some of these issues. However, these instruments are intended for clinical use and reflect patient-reported quality of life (QoL) parameters in defined time intervals. Being a clinician-scientist, the doctor in academia often tends to objectify patients and their problems so that it will be easy to measure and report the treatment outcomes in a defined format. Unfortunately, this is a double-edged sword. Though they are precise in measuring the defined treatment outcomes, they unintentionally ignore associated unresolved issues for the patients. For example, the morbidity of cancer treatment can be significant and long-lasting. Similarly, the patients also face financial, social, and psychological problems. In this symposium, I shall try to bring out some real-world issues faced by our patients, which are often ignored in medical literature while reporting outcomes of clinical trials. Hopefully, these discussions shall lead to developing more comprehensive outcome reporting instruments.