Words as Medicine: The Therapeutic Art of Storytelling in Michaelides "The Silent Patient"

Abstract

This study focuses on the way health care providers can connect to and comprehend their patients through narratives. This work sheds light on the area of narrative medicine by presenting a way of improving clinicians' responses to patients' suffering as well as their own experiences. It also explains that narrative medicine is significantly based on three primary factors that are Attention, Affiliation, Representation between clinicians and the patients. In this concept, patients and doctors used to communicate mostly through storytelling, and the ability to deeply pay attention to storytelling. Alex Michaelides The Silent Patient expertly affects what occurs in Alicia's life, whose ideal existence suffers when she killed her husband in a surprising act, then mysteriously goes silent, refusing to speak, and checking her into an insane asylum. In this study the researcher applies the theory of NARRATIVE MEDICINE in literature by Rita Charon and also uses a narrative approach. This study investigates the protagonist past, her traumas and the purposes behind her mysterious quietness to understand when emotions constantly pile up inside of a person, they all suddenly burst into flame and one can frequently get revenge out of mystery.