Narrative and Healing focuses on the therapeutic properties of writing and storytelling, providing examples of how people of all ages face life’s challenges through the art of telling their stories. The section is divided into two parts: Professional Perspectives offers the views of health professionals on theories, techniques, research, and the application of narrative in health care and educational settings. The articles are arranged in alphabetical order (according to the name of the author). Healing Narratives provides examples that demonstrate the therapeutic properties of writing and telling stories.

PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Introduction

     Introduction to Narrative and Healing

Dr. Aron. S. Wolf, an Anchorage psychiatrist, introduces research on how narrative can promote good health by reducing the stress that affects everyone's lives.

Articles

     Using Stories for Growing and Healing

Dr. Christiane Brems, a UAA psychology professor, offers some hints about how to use stories, both in a group (including family) and individual context, for their healing and growth-promoting powers.

    Traditional Indian Medicine
    and Native American Cancer Patients

Dr. Linda Burhansstipanov, Executive Director of Native American Cancer Research, describes different ways Traditional Indian Medicine heals Native American cancer patients. The article includes a brief overview of the cancer experience of the Native cancer patient with an emphasis on the inclusion of Traditional Indian Medicine for cancer treatment, recovery and healing.

    The Place of Narrative in the Courtroom

Dr. Philip J. Candilis, a forensic psychiatrist, discusses how narrative helps humanize and enrich procedures, rules, and abstract principles like objectivity and truth in the judicial system.

     Narrative Medicine

Dr. Rita Charon writes for LitSite Alaska about the program in narrative competence she developed at the Columbia University medical school, in which medical students learn how to better "read" their patients' stories through literary studies.

      Sandplay: Stories Told Without Words

Dr. Al Collins and Elaine Molchanov write about a healing therapy called Sandplay, where clients create their own narratives without needing words.

      Why Write Personal Narratives?

Dr. Julie Connelly says that doctors are in an ideal position to be writers because they have "the most incredible view of life."

    The Patient's Story. The Doctor's Medicine

Dr. Jack Coulehan, professor of medicine in Society at Stony Brook University and a poet, shares his personal experiences of the dichotomies in American medical care where medical students are taught that narrative constitutes the heart of medical practice and yet in the hospital, an anti-narrative culture pervades.

      Coping With Leisure
     in the Twenty-First Century

Nobel Laureate Robert W. Fogel shares insights into how technology and physiological advances present opportunities to use narrative as a spiritual resource.

    Stories and Healing: Observations
    on the Progress of My Thoughts

Dr. Arthur W. Frank, professor of sociology at the University of Calgary , provides four lessons learned from writing three books on illness narratives. He discusses the concept of generosity in how a person understands and acts on the connection between another's life and his or her own.

     Writing as an Adjunct
     to Medical Therapy

Dr. Michael Jones discusses the benefits of writing -- in alleviating mental and physical stress -- as an adjunct to medical therapy.

     Writing Can Improve Working Memory

Dr. Kitty Klein writes for LitSite Alaska about her research which suggests that writing can improve your ability to concentrate.

     Writing Rings Around Death

Dr. Johanna Shapiro, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine, University of California Irvine School of Medicine, discusses how she discovered the healing properties of creative writing through her own illness and introduced creative writing exercises into her own professional work with medical students.

      Writing, Emotions and Memory

Dr. Esther M. Sternberg writes for LitSite Alaska about the connections between Writing, Emotions and Memory.

Healing Narratives

      The Final Night

In a tenth-grade essay on a "challenging life experience," Kelli Donovan writes about the night her father died.

      Medication and Me

In this essay, Heather Villars explores her experiences with depresssion.

     How My Dog Died

In a third-grade writing assignment, Brennan Zelener recalls the night his dog died.