Mad Lit.: Introduction to a Special Issue of the Journal of Medical Humanities

This special issue emerges as a result of papers delivered at the 1st International Health Humanities Conference: Madness & Literature, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, and held at the Institute of Mental Health at the University of Nottingham, August 6–8, 2010. The conference, which included keynotes from Elaine Showalter (The Female Malady) and Kay Redfield Jamison (Touched By Fire), was hosted as part of a range of initiatives based at the University of Nottingham which we call ‘Health Humanities’—an evolution of Medical Humanities towards greater inclusion of and engagement with allied health professionals including nurses, occupational therapists and those practicing the expressive therapies, as well as carers, service-users and a wider self- caring public. Our aim is to address the growing and broadening demand from other professions to become involved and to include new sectors of the healthcare workforce, as well as informal carers who have often been left out of the medical humanities so far.