Finding (our) voices: Narrative, health and speaking the self

The area of art and health, art and wellbeing, Health Humanities, is a rich field for both research and creative production. The sometimes gritty narratives — both research-driven and creative — produced by researchers and practitioners can be challenging to read due to their subject matter and the approach of the writers, because of the content matter that may cause readers to be unsettled, to flinch or draw back. Such work also challenges the innately positivist, positive and improving rhetoric that can surround work in the health discipline, instead embracing the subjective and human side of ill-health, and challenge the possibility of achieving wellbeing in any formal sense. Such material casts light on the human, the humane, the inhumane and the human condition – sometimes at its most visceral.