El relat en l’àmbit sanitariels casos clínics sobre afeccions mentals

Abstract

We study the clinical case reports (CCR) and clinical tales, as a contribution to the dialogue between the scientific knowledge —health sciences— and the humanistic approach —linguistic and literary studies— through the bridge of discourse analysis. We contextualize the CCR among healthcare discourses and emphasize their importance as texts that can help changing the dehumanizing path that often takes today's healthcare practice. We apply concepts of storytelling theory to analyze both genres, in support of a conception of the CCR as narrative. We focus on the field of mental disorders, especially in neurology, psychiatry and psychology. We analyze a corpus of 115 CCR in three languages —Catalan, Spanish and English— and four books of clinical tales in English.