A Look Back and a Path Forward: Poetry's Healing Power during the Pandemic
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A Look Back and a Path Forward: Poetry's Healing Power during the Pandemic David Haosen Xiang 1
& Alisha Moon Yi
2
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
This discussion seeks to highlight the ability of poetry to combat loneliness, a growing public health problem with significant negative health outcomes that potentially impact millions of Americans. We argue that poetry can play a very relevant role and have an impact in medicine. Through a brief literature review of previous studies on poetry in medicine, we demonstrate that poetry can not only combat loneliness but can also play important roles in helping patients, physicians, and other healthcare professionals/providers. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe now is the perfect opportunity to utilize poetry because the benefits can be experienced even in solitude, which is why this is such a timely and pertinent issue today. Keywords Poetry . Loneliness . Social isolation . Healing . Connection
“Healing is a matter of time, but it is also a matter of opportunity.” – Hippocrates
Introduction During this pandemic, the dangers of loneliness and social isolation cannot be ignored. Loneliness is associated with a 26% increase in risk of premature mortality, can have a negative impact on cardiovascular, immune, and nervous systems, and affects about a third of people in
David Haosen Xiang and Alisha Moon Yi contributed equally to this article.
* David Haosen Xiang [email protected]
1
Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115, United States
2
Harvard College, Cambridge, MA, USA
Journal of Medical Humanities
most industrialized countries (Cacioppo and Cacioppo 2018). Reducing social interactions is a well-documented risk factor for several mental disorders including schizophrenia and major depression, as well as generating increased feelings of fear and anxiety (Miller 2011). Moreover, with acute stress generated during the COVID-19 pandemic, reported symptoms of psychological stress, including loneliness, among American adults have increased since 2018 (McGinty et al. 2020). With the disruption of regular networks of trusted individuals and groups, that means we must confront these pertinent mental health issues ourselves. Yet without meaningful methods or practical tools to do so, many have nowhere to turn to, and no solution seems to be in sight. Lack of access to mental health resources is exacerbated by this pandemic, and improving mental health services is needed (Moreno et al. 2020). After all, loneliness is becoming an incredibly pressing public health problem, and must be addressed with proper engagement and full support from the medical community. In this paper, we hope to show that poetry can be a powerful, practical, and accessible tool to combat loneliness directly, and that poetry can provide a new avenue for healing. Since the nineteenth century, poetry has been used formally and informally for healing purposes in the United States, and now, in our current day, we belie
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