Merry Lynn Morris, MFA provides an inspiring example of this restorative role of humanities in the performing arts as she describes her journey in the development of the innovative Rolling Dance/Mobility Chair project.
This poignant report maps the direct line between the introduction of humanities into rehabilitation and its powerful impact on healing—and beyond. It begins with a case study of a 47-year-old woman with a right temporal lobectomy at age 22, who has written poetry over the past 30 years “to express her positive mystical experiences.” The content then switches to the first-person, with poet Michele Slaton describing the remarkable insights she has experienced on her rehabilitation journey. Her poems, included here, present a deep and moving argument for the gifts that a physical crisis can unlock when humanities play a part in treatment.
This article and the photos that accompany it speak volumes about the lives and perspectives of the photographers presented: SCI patients at the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Los Angeles.
In this stirring account, Oluremi Wanjiru Onifade and Sarah Caston present an honest and compelling look at the challenges within the physical therapy educational community for Black and brown people. Onifade paints a picture of her life growing up as a Kenyan/Nigerian queer-identifying Black American, and the obstacles she overcame on the path to her DPT. Her account ends where she challenges her colleague Caston: “There is a lack of representation of Black and brown people teaching in your PT program. Are you willing to do something?”
In response, Caston describes how that direct question changes her perception as an educator. She asks, “What does it look like for me, a white, heterosexual, cis-gender woman, to stand up to racism? And again, I ask, what does it look like for the profession of physical therapy to do the same?”
This companion piece to the McDaniels article builds on their arguments for improved learning and applies them to physical therapy education. Steven Ambler advocates for the integration of Learning Sciences in physical therapy curricula. “Curricula that position the student, faculty, and profession as learner, and consider the plurality of learning theories, can help us all reach a deeper sense of what it means to be a physical therapist serving society,” he notes.
“Communicating in the Silence” focuses on the challenges that deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) patients can face when seeking mental healthcare. Marcela Almeida and Katherine Kosman detail the barriers to care of one DHH young man, whose “medical diagnosis and treatment path were substantially changed by a more careful assessment that considered the unique aspects of the DHH population.” The authors’ recommendations for the future include an argument for greater use of Certified Deaf Interpreters in healthcare.
“What started as a narrowly-focused mission to welcome people with dementia … into our museum for the first time evolved into a much broader and more profound project: to reinvent what agency within the museum would look and feel like for visitors living with dementia,” author Susan Shifrin notes in this compelling piece. She details her journey from that experience to founding ARTZ Philadelphia, a program that invites people with dementia to serve as mentors to program participants.