Literature and Health in the 21st Century

Dear Colleagues,

What is the use of literature in view of today’s health challenges? This Special Issue focuses on the European region and invites papers that explore current challenges in health, well-being, and healthcare as represented in literature. The challenges, we see, are plenty: growing social inequality and political polarization with effects on public health, including various kinds of addiction; decreasing trust in science and institutions impacting vaccination programs; the multiple causes of migration, which require new competences in culture and language; a focus on fertility and the care of older citizens in response to demographic changes; fast-paced lives and unattainable ideals on social media that have been correlated with mental stress and psychiatric illnesses; the ethics of using artificial intelligence in health care; the increasingly tangible impact of climate change; and, last but not least, a present risk of new pandemics. By literature, we understand reading and writing, visible in book form, on walls and screens, in academia, in the clinic, and with vulnerable people. How have European writers in the 21st century explored these contemporary challenges as they impact health, well-being, and health care, and can facilitated activities of creative writing and shared reading in some ways support those solutions? Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Empathy, compassion, and justice in healthcare;
• Stigma and stereotypes (e.g., migrants, ethnic minorities, transgendered persons);
• Access to public health care;
• Psychiatric diagnosis (e.g., autism, depression, schizophrenia);
• Mental health of adolescents;
• Dependency (e.g., alcohol, drugs);
• Vaccination programs;
• Reproductive health and aging;
• Suicide related to A.I.;
• Climate anxiety;
• Pandemics (e.g., COVID-19).

Dr. Anders Juhl Rasmussen
Dr. Anita Wohlmann
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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