Author: ISCHPblog

Living on Hope? Reflections on ‘Hope Labour’ in Academia

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Written by David Brax

This blog has been reposted from Lex Academic. Find the original post here.

In academic fields where competition is tough and resources are scarce, it is common for people to perform work for little or no remuneration, hoping that this will lead to better opportunities for further employment, promotion or recognition. This sort of work can be described as ‘hope labour’. David Brax, adviser at the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research, reasons here about hope in academic work as an important driving force but also warns about it as a potential source of exploitation.

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eHealth, agency, and vulnerability in cancer: A reflection

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Written by Esther de Jongh

Photo by Steven Lelham on Unsplash

Within the cancer survivorship domain, the use of exercise to reduce negative side effects of treatment is gradually becoming standard practice, resulting in a higher quality of life for many.1-4 Accelerated by the pandemic in 2019, the use of eHealth programs for supervised exercise (also known as telerehabilitation programs), whether experimental or standardized, has increased. eHealth programs have the potential to bypass obstacles that might prevent patients from exercising at a physical location, such as long distances and lack of time or (financial) resources.5-7 Reducing the equity gap in health care is one of the promises its online delivery hopes to fulfill: provision of exercise with online guidance can lower the threshold for those who lack know-how or resources to do so on their own accord, while staying in the familiarity of their own home. In this post I highlight the important role of the healthcare provider (HCP) in making these programs accessible to everyone. 

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Show and Tell

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Written by Megan Young

It’s early in the morning, somewhere around 4am, and I have been woken from sleep (again) by a migraine. More precisely it is a cluster headache, but this always sounds to me too gentle a label for the kind of nerve pain that accompanies it, so I call them migraines in an attempt to communicate the appropriate level of suffering.

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AI-Human Collaboration: From Quant to Qual, Turning Data into Meaning

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Written by Paulina Bondaronek and Siobhán Healy-Cullen

Image depicting AI-Human collab created using rather primitive prompting in Ideogram.

Machine-assisted topic analysis (MATA) aims to use the efficiency of Artificial Intelligence and combines it with the nuanced and rich insights derived from qualitative analysis. I call this a “meaningful AI-Human collaboration”. MATA was developed in response to a significant challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic; I was tasked with analysing and providing actionable insights based on 16,000 free-text responses to the question “How could we improve the service” (rapidly). The service in question was the NHS Test & Trace, which managed the pandemic response in England. With only my eyeballs to rely on (…and my expertise as a Behavioural Scientist), I recognised the potential of technology to speed up this task.

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When ‘we’ is more than two: families and infertility in India

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Written by Arushi Kothari and Parul Bansal

A child holds great value for individuals, couples, families and communities across the world. One only has to look at ancient art, literature, architecture to unpack the deep emotional and psychological significance that pregnancy, birth and parenthood has been imbued with across cultures. Thus childlessness, particularly due to infertility, has gained immense focus in the past 40 years, particularly with the arrival of advanced assistive reproductive technologies (ARTs). Within this complex interweb of medicine, desire and relationships, our work has focused on the experiences of low-income childless couples dealing with infertility in India. The narrative qualitative research involved in-depth interviews with 12 low-income couples seeking infertility treatment at a private IVF centre in New Delhi, India.

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Lies, Lies, it’s all Lies! Discussing Vaginal Cleansing Products from a Critical Health Perspective

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Written by: Mariangela Del Monaco, Sarah Cappellaro, and Vaidehi Patel

Vaginal cleansing products such as douches, washes, sprays, and wipes have become extremely popular in the last few decades. Despite their popularity, these products may pose health risk to their users like yeast infections, urinary tract infections (UTIs), and bacterial vaginosis (BV). Could this mean people prioritize a “clean” vagina over a “healthy” vagina?

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Make Believe

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Some inspiration for ways to think differently about healthcare practice

Written by Dave Nicholls. Re-published with permission from ParaDoxa

Those of you who had followed the Critical Physio blog before ParaDoxa started will know that I teach a postgrad course for experienced health professionals. The course is designed to get them to think deeply and critically about themselves as professionals, their profession, and the myriad others they work with. Crucially, it’s designed to get them to think in unfamiliar ways about work that has, for some, become stale through familiarity.

As part of the assessment, they produce six artefacts that can be in any medium, any style or form, but they are especially encouraged to express themselves without words. Periodically I’d post up some images from the last course to showcase some of the creative things they have produced as inspiration for the times when we all feel a little blocked.

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Holding our mums…

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Written by: Cassandra Sundaraja

Photo by Liv Bruce on Unsplash

Giving birth to a child – bringing forth new life into the world – is an amazing feat a human body (with a uterus) is capable of achieving. It sounds so heroic and powerful. However, going through the process of labour and delivery in a hospital setting, I was struck by the stark contrast of how pregnant, labouring and post-partum women are made to feel instead – powerless and without agency.

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Cancer is increasingly survivable – but it shouldn’t depend on your ability to ‘wrangle’ the health system

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Written by: Kevin Dew, Alex Broom, Chris Cunningham, Elizabeth Dennett, Kerry Chamberlain, and Richard Egan

Getty Images

One in three of us will develop cancer at some point in our lives. But survival rates have improved to the point that two-thirds of those diagnosed live more than five years.

This extraordinary shift over the past few decades introduces new challenges. A large and growing proportion of people diagnosed with cancer are living with it, rather than dying of it.

In our recently published research we examined the cancer experiences of 81 New Zealanders (23 Māori and 58 non-Māori).

We found survivorship not only entailed managing the disease, but also “wrangling” a complex health system.

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The Shock of the New? A review of the 2024 In Sickness In Health Conference 

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By Liz McKibben

Photo by Phill Brown on Unsplash

Alright! Sign me up!  

This reaction was unusual for me. I don’t really like conferences. I’d rather sit snuggled up at home and read an article than watch somebody narrate their PowerPoint slides. They often feel like a self-serving platform that we attend just to plump up our academic CVs. Surely, I’m not the only person who gets unbelievably bored? Maybe this one will be different. I was seduced by the promise of shocking newness. 

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Complicating Chemsex

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By Siobhán Healy-Cullen and Chris Noone

Image credit: The Andrey Rylkov Foundation 

In recent years, the phenomenon of chemsex, a practice involving the use of drugs to enhance sexual experiences, has become a topic of increasing concern (some would say moral panic; see Hakim, 2019) and research. Traditionally, this practice has been studied through a lens that emphasises potential harm and pathologises those who engage in chemsex. As noted by Møller (2023, p. 922) “chemsex research mostly approaches the phenomenon from the perspective of health, focusing on ‘problematic’ aspects that tend to overstate risks and obscure the complicated role that drugs play in people’s lives”.  However, a more critical perspective is emerging, viewing chemsex participants as valid sexual citizens engaged in a complex socio-cultural landscape.  

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Towards peer-led and person-centred care

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By Bella van Hattum

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

Ma te rongo, ka mohio;
Ma te mohio, ka marama;
Ma te marama, ka matau;
Ma te matau, ka ora.
Through listening comes awareness; through awareness comes understanding; through understanding comes knowledge; through knowledge comes life and well-being.

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Weaving Together

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By Brett Scholz

Nankeri nanggi / good day

During border closures in 2020, I remember feeling both more acutely unable to get anywhere I might want or need to be, and more in touch with where I was (very privileged to be on the largely COVID-free Ngunnawal and Ngambri country with lots of open space to get out and make the most of its beautiful surrounds). I was exhausted working to ensure that health care consumers could be the architects of the ICU triage process for the Australian Capital Territory during the pandemic. Something that gave me energy to get through this, and that helped me feel more connected to family and home beyond Ngunnawal and Ngambri country was trying to learn and engage more with Aboriginal languages. I have always been interested in language, and disappointed that I didn’t have any knowledge about Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri language despite having close ties to that part of the country. When I would email colleagues, friends, or family on Kaurna or Ngarrindjeri country, using local greetings and sign offs it helped me to feel like I was a little closer to them. When emailing others, I used Ngunnawal language greetings to locate myself to others.

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Unmasking Jack S. Hatcher

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By Kerry Chamberlain

Some years ago, Jack S. Hatcher* published a (rather unusual) article in Qualitative Research in Psychology (Hatcher, 2011). Who was this person, and how did this come about?

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A Case for Absurdism in Critical Health Psychology

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By Beck Lowe

Photo by cottonbro studio on pexels

It was during my second undergraduate year of Drama & Performance Studies over a decade ago – performing a dinner party scene where no one ate, and the characters became increasingly agitated for no apparent reason – that I first discovered my love of absurdism.

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