Digital Health Humanities

In this chapter we will examine the newly emerging health humanities and the opportunities these afford for explorations of patterns of language and culture, and novel examinations of the context and culture of health and illness. The health humanities represent a new departure in scholarship and practice as they attempt to include the full range of health professions as well as informal carers, creative therapies and service users themselves. Drawing on a variety of data sources from the previous decade of the author’s exploration of these themes we will examine how language use in creative activities may be associated with recovery, how literary traditions illuminate the informal storytelling of mental health practitioners and how concepts such as recovery and mutuality in health care can be productively dissected using literary-analytical techniques to indicate productive ways forward.