Jonathan M. Metzl – författare

A physician's "provocative" (Boston Globe) and "timely" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times Book Review) account of how right-wing backlash policies have deadly consequences - even for the white voters they promise to help.In election after election, conservative white Americans have embraced politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as Dying of Whiteness shows, right-wing policies put these voters' very health at risk-and in the end, threaten everyone's well-being. Physician and sociologist Jonathan M. Metzl travels across America's heartland seeking to better understand the politics of racial resentment and its impact on public health. Interviewing a range of Americans, he uncovers how racial anxieties led to the repeal of gun control laws in Missouri, fueled massive cuts to schools and social services in Kansas, and stymied healthcare reform across the country. Although such measures promised to restore greatness to white America, Metzl's systematic analysis of health data reveals they did just the opposite: these policies made life sicker, harder, and shorter in the very populations they purported to aid. Thus, white gun suicides soared, life expectancies fell, and school dropout rates rose.Now with a new foreword on the backlash to the American pandemic response, Dying of Whiteness demonstrates how much white America would benefit by emphasizing cooperation, rather than chasing false promises of supremacy.? Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award

In an increasingly diverse society, it is essential that medicine be aware of matters of difference. Medical humanities programs promote awareness of the social aspects of medicine, and the Association of American Medical Colleges has recently instituted cultural competencies for clinical interaction for the training of medical students. Yet these efforts to impart understanding of the cross-cultural aspects of medicine are still hindered by a significant limitation: within a medical system whose currency is diagnosis, difference is primarily defined through disease. This special issue of Literature and Medicine focuses on difference and identity in the context of disease and disability. The articles collected here explore the complex ways in which notions of disease, disability, and difference are related and in which bodies marked by gender, race, disability, sexuality, and ethnic identities experience disease in specific ways. The essays take a humanities-based approach to the subject and emphasize an awareness and sensitivity to difference through forms of symbolic representation such as metaphor and narrative.This volume provides a heuristic lens through which relationships between individual expressions of identity and communal experiences of difference can be considered. Each article speaks to the process whereby individual stories and strategies shape, and are in turn shaped by, the institutions they seek to transform. Literature and Medicine is devoted to exploring interfaces between literary and medical knowledge and understanding. The journal showcases the creative and critical work of renowned physician-writers, leading literary scholars, and medical humanists.

A powerful account of how cultural anxieties about race shaped American notions of mental illness The civil rights era is largely remembered as a time of sit-ins, boycotts, and riots. But a very different civil rights history evolved at the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ionia, Michigan. In The Protest Psychosis, psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American protesters at Ionia—for political reasons as well as clinical ones. Expertly sifting through a vast array of cultural documents, Metzl shows how associations between schizophrenia and blackness emerged during the tumultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s—and he provides a cautionary tale of how anxieties about race continue to impact doctor-patient interactions in our seemingly postracial America.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Navigates the divergent cultural meanings of health, and its entanglement with morality in current political discourseYou see someone smoking a cigarette and say,"Smoking is bad for your health," when what you mean is, "You are a bad person because you smoke." You encounter someone whose body size you deem excessive, and say, "Obesity is bad for your health," when what you mean is, "You are lazy, unsightly, or weak of will." You see a woman bottle-feeding an infant and say,"Breastfeeding is better for that child's health," when what you mean is that the woman must be a bad parent. You see the smokers, the overeaters, the bottle-feeders, and affirm your own health in the process. In these and countless other instances, the perception of your own health depends in part on your value judgments about others, and appealing to health allows for a set of moral assumptions to fly stealthily under the radar.Against Health argues that health is a concept, a norm, and a set of bodily practices whose ideological work is often rendered invisible by the assumption that it is a monolithic, universal good. And, that disparities in the incidence and prevalence of disease are closely linked to disparities in income and social support. To be clear, the book's stand against health is not a stand against the authenticity of people's attempts to ward off suffering. Against Health instead claims that individual strivings for health are, in some instances, rendered more difficult by the ways in which health is culturally configured and socially sustained.The book intervenes into current political debates about health in two ways. First, Against Health compellingly unpacks the divergent cultural meanings of health and explores the ideologies involved in its construction. Second, the authors present strategies for moving forward. They ask, what new possibilities and alliances arise? What new forms of activism or coalition can we create? What are our prospects for well-being? In short, what have we got if we ain't got health? Against Health ultimately argues that the conversations doctors, patients, politicians, activists, consumers, and policymakers have about health are enriched by recognizing that, when talking about health, they are not all talking about the same thing. And, that articulating the disparate valences of "health" can lead to deeper, more productive, and indeed more healthy interactions about our bodies.

Navigates the divergent cultural meanings of health, and its entanglement with morality in current political discourseYou see someone smoking a cigarette and say,"Smoking is bad for your health," when what you mean is, "You are a bad person because you smoke." You encounter someone whose body size you deem excessive, and say, "Obesity is bad for your health," when what you mean is, "You are lazy, unsightly, or weak of will." You see a woman bottle-feeding an infant and say,"Breastfeeding is better for that child's health," when what you mean is that the woman must be a bad parent. You see the smokers, the overeaters, the bottle-feeders, and affirm your own health in the process. In these and countless other instances, the perception of your own health depends in part on your value judgments about others, and appealing to health allows for a set of moral assumptions to fly stealthily under the radar.Against Health argues that health is a concept, a norm, and a set of bodily practices whose ideological work is often rendered invisible by the assumption that it is a monolithic, universal good. And, that disparities in the incidence and prevalence of disease are closely linked to disparities in income and social support. To be clear, the book's stand against health is not a stand against the authenticity of people's attempts to ward off suffering. Against Health instead claims that individual strivings for health are, in some instances, rendered more difficult by the ways in which health is culturally configured and socially sustained.The book intervenes into current political debates about health in two ways. First, Against Health compellingly unpacks the divergent cultural meanings of health and explores the ideologies involved in its construction. Second, the authors present strategies for moving forward. They ask, what new possibilities and alliances arise? What new forms of activism or coalition can we create? What are our prospects for well-being? In short, what have we got if we ain't got health? Against Health ultimately argues that the conversations doctors, patients, politicians, activists, consumers, and policymakers have about health are enriched by recognizing that, when talking about health, they are not all talking about the same thing. And, that articulating the disparate valences of "health" can lead to deeper, more productive, and indeed more healthy interactions about our bodies.

When a naked, mentally ill white man with an AR-15 killed four young adults of colour at a nearby Waffle House, Nashville-based doctor and gun policy scholar Jonathan M. Metzl once again advocated for common-sense gun reform. But as he peeled back evidence surrounding the racially charged mass shooting, a shocking question emerged: Did the approach he championed have it all wrong?Long a leading expert at the forefront of a movement advocating for gun reform as a matter of public health, Dr Metzl has been on constant media call in the aftermath of fatal shootings. But the 2018 Nashville killings led him on a path toward recognising the limitations of biomedical frameworks for fully diagnosing or treating the impassioned complexities of American gun politics. Increasingly, as Dr Metzl came to understand it, public health is a harder sell in a nation that fundamentally disagrees about what it means to be safe, healthy or free. This brilliant, piercing analysis shows mass shootings as a symptom of our most unresolved national conflicts. What We've Become ultimately sets us on the path of alliance-forging, racial-reckoning and political power-brokering we must take to put things right.

An expert at the forefront of a movement advocating for gun reform as a matter of public health, doctor and gun policy scholar, Jonathan M. Metzl has been on media call in the aftermath of fatal shootings.When a mentally ill white man killed four young adults of colour at a Waffle House, Metzl once again advocated for common-sense gun reform. But as he peeled back evidence surrounding the shooting, a shocking question emerged: Did the approach he championed have it all wrong? These killings led him on a path toward recognising the limitations of biomedical frameworks for fully diagnosing or treating the impassioned complexities of American gun politics.This brilliant, piercing analysis shows mass shootings as a symptom of America’s most unresolved national conflicts. What We've Become sets America on the path of alliance-forging, racial-reckoning and political power-brokering that must be taken to put things right.

Introduces key concepts and debates in health humanities and the health professions.Keywords for Health Humanities provides a rich, interdisciplinary vocabulary for the burgeoning field of health humanities and, more broadly, for the study of medicine and health. Sixty-five entries by leading international scholars examine current practices, ideas, histories, and debates around health and illness, revealing the social, cultural, and political factors that structure health conditions and shape health outcomes.Presenting possibilities for health justice and social change, this volume exposes readers—from curious beginners to cultural analysts, from medical students to health care practitioners of all fields—to lively debates about the complexities of health and illness and their ethical and political implications. A study of the vocabulary that comprises and shapes a broad understanding of health and the practices of healthcare, Keywords for Health Humanities guides readers toward ways to communicate accurately and effectively while engaging in creative analytical thinking about health and healthcare in an increasingly complex world—one in which seemingly straightforward beliefs and decisions about individual and communal health represent increasingly contested terrain.The online essays for all Keywords titles can be found here: keywords.nyupress.org

Introduces key concepts and debates in health humanities and the health professions.Keywords for Health Humanities provides a rich, interdisciplinary vocabulary for the burgeoning field of health humanities and, more broadly, for the study of medicine and health. Sixty-five entries by leading international scholars examine current practices, ideas, histories, and debates around health and illness, revealing the social, cultural, and political factors that structure health conditions and shape health outcomes.Presenting possibilities for health justice and social change, this volume exposes readers—from curious beginners to cultural analysts, from medical students to health care practitioners of all fields—to lively debates about the complexities of health and illness and their ethical and political implications. A study of the vocabulary that comprises and shapes a broad understanding of health and the practices of healthcare, Keywords for Health Humanities guides readers toward ways to communicate accurately and effectively while engaging in creative analytical thinking about health and healthcare in an increasingly complex world—one in which seemingly straightforward beliefs and decisions about individual and communal health represent increasingly contested terrain.The online essays for all Keywords titles can be found here: keywords.nyupress.org

This book documents the ways that clinical practitioners and trainees have used the “structural competency” framework to reduce inequalities in health.  The essays describe on-the-ground ways that clinicians, educators, and activists craft structural interventions to enhance health outcomes, student learning, and community organizing around issues of social justice in health and healthcare. Each chapter of the book begins with a case study that illuminates a competency in reorienting clinical and public health practice toward community, institutional and policy level intervention based on alliances with social agencies, community organizations and policy makers.  Written by authors who are trained in both clinical and social sciences, the chapters cover pedagogy in classrooms and clinics, community collaboration, innovative health promotion approaches in non-health sectors and in public policies, offering a view of effective care as structural intervention and a road maptoward its implementation.Structural Competency in Mental Health and Medicine is a cutting-edge resource for psychiatrists, primary care physicians, addiction medicine specialists, emergency medicine specialists, nurses, social workers, public health practitioners, and other clinicians working toward equality in health.