{"title":"Healthcare System + Healthcare Policy","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"quarterly-essay-18-paperback","title":"The Worried Well; QE18 by Gail Bell","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eThe Worried Well: The Depression Epidemic and the Medicalisation of Our Sorrows\u003c\/em\u003e, Gail Bell investigates Australia's depression epidemic. Why, she wonders, do well over a million Australians now take antidepressant drugs?\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a fresh, frank and independent look at the depression culture and the move to medicalise sadness. Bell examines how the prescription culture operates, scrutinising the role of big drug companies and GPs and talking to those who take - and don't take - the new antidepressants, from anxious students to lonely retirees. She finds that drug companies have invested billions in an effort to simplify a profoundly complex mental condition, and that along the way ordinary problems of living have been transformed into medical conditions. She also finds that we, the consumers, have been happy to get on board: the vocabulary of depression - \"serotonin\", \"bipolar\", \"genetic predisposition\" - rolls off our tongues as if each of us had studied it at medical school.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn this freeranging and elegant essay, Bell takes the pulse of Australia's \"worried well\" and looks at alternative cures for what ails us.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCorrespondence discussing Quarterly Essay 18, \u003cem\u003eThe Worried Well\u003c\/em\u003e:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cul\u003e\r\n\t\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.quarterlyessay.com.au\/correspondence\/correspondence-guy-rundle-0\"\u003eGuy Rundle\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\r\n\t\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.quarterlyessay.com.au\/correspondence\/correspondence-gordon-parker\"\u003eGordon Parker\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\r\n\t\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.quarterlyessay.com.au\/correspondence\/correspondence-elizabeth-a-wilson\"\u003eElizabeth A. Wilson\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\r\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"QE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39460765859975,"sku":"9781863953818-POD","price":29.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/qe18_0_f9bff5b2-ec1e-44c6-b730-b49bc32b0974.jpg?v=1625796547"},{"product_id":"quarterly-essay-57-paperback","title":"Dear Life; QE57 by Karen Hitchcock","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this moving and controversial Quarterly Essay, doctor and writer Karen Hitchcock investigates the treatment of the elderly and dying through some unforgettable cases. With honesty and deep experience, she looks at end-of-life decisions, frailty and dementia, over-treatment and escalating costs.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003eOurs is a society in which ageism, often disguised, threatens to turn the elderly into a “burden” – difficult, hopeless, expensive and homogenous. While we rightly seek to curb treatment when it is futile, harmful or against a patient’s wishes, this can sometimes lead to limits on care that suit the system rather than the person. Doctors may declare a situation hopeless when it may not be so.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003eWe must plan for a future when more of us will be old, Hitchcock argues, with the aim of making that time better, not shorter. And we must change our institutions and society to meet the needs of an ageing population. \u003cem\u003eDear Life\u003c\/em\u003e is a landmark essay by one of Australia’s most powerful writers.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCorrespondence discussing Quarterly Essay 57, \u003cem\u003eDear Life\u003c\/em\u003e:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cul\u003e\r\n\t\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.quarterlyessay.com.au\/correspondence\/correspondence-inga-clendinnen\"\u003eInga Clendinnen\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\r\n\t\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.quarterlyessay.com.au\/correspondence\/correspondence-jack-kirszenblat\"\u003eJack Kirszenblat\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\r\n\t\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.quarterlyessay.com.au\/correspondence\/correspondence-peter-martin\"\u003ePeter Martin\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\r\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\r\n","brand":"QE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39460767268999,"sku":"9781863957168-POD","price":29.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/qe57_0_52068a05-edb5-4ab4-8c49-9f07fcba3f77.jpg?v=1625796717"},{"product_id":"quarterly-essay-85","title":"Not Waving, Drowning; QE85 by Sarah Krasnostein","description":"\u003cp\u003eAround one-fifth of Australians will suffer from mental illness in any given year. And the pandemic is making things worse, especially in schools. Our mental health system is under stress and not fit for purpose. What is to be done?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this brilliant mix of portraiture and analysis, Sarah Krasnostein tells the stories of three women and their treatment by the state while at their most unwell. What do their experiences tell us about the likelihood of institutional and cultural change?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eKrasnostein argues that we live in a society that often punishes vulnerability, but shows we have the resources to mend a broken system. But do we have the will to do so, or must the patterns of the past persist into the future?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"QE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39549523820679,"sku":"9781760643270","price":29.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/QE85_online.jpg?v=1644884681"},{"product_id":"dear-lifepaperback","title":"Dear Life by Karen Hitchcock","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe elderly, the frail    are  our society. They are our parents and grandparents, our carers and neighbours, and they are every one of us in the not-too-distant future . . . They are not a growing cost to be managed or a burden to be shifted or a horror to be hidden away, but people whose needs require us to change'\u003cbr\u003e\n \u003cbr\u003e\n In  Dear Life , using vivid and moving case studies, Karen Hitchcock show what care for the elderly and dying is really like – both the good and the bad. With honesty and deep experience, she looks at end-of-life decisions and over-treatment, frailty and dementia.\u003cbr\u003e\n \u003cbr\u003e\n Throughout she argues against the creeping tendency to see the elderly as a 'burden' – difficult, hopeless, expensive and homogenous. We must plan for a future when more of us will be old, Hitchcock argues, with the aim of making that time better, not shorter. An we must change our institution and society to meet the needs of an ageing population. Dear Life is a landmark book by one of Australia's most powerful writers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619587735687,"sku":"9781863958165","price":26.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/9781925203875_FC.jpg?v=1636455562"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.schwartzbooks.com.au\/collections\/healthcare-system-healthcare-policy.oembed","provider":"Schwartz Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}