"Humanistic medicine" is a term compounded, for therapeutic purposes, with the good intent of reminding clinicians of their need to be compassionate and empathic. Although the expression is arresting, and demands thought, it does not go far enough. "Values-based medicine" is a stronger term, reminding clinicians of the sustaining values that underpin the whole health endeavour. These values inc...

A continuous assessment and a categorical diagnosis of the presence (i.e., flourishing) and the absence (i.e., languishing) of mental health were proposed and applied to the Midlife in the United States study data, a nationally representative sample of adults between the ages of 25 and 74 years (N = 3,032). Confirmatory factor analyses supported the hypothesis that measures of mental health (i....

Much work in contemporary bioethics defends a broadly liberal view of human reproduction. I shall take this view to comprise (but not to be exhausted by) the following four claims. First, it is permissible both to reproduce and not to reproduce, either by traditional means or by means of assisted reproductive techniques such as IVF and genetic screening. Second, it is permissible either to repr...

Background: In this article we consider how the question of what music can or cannot do is linked to the kind of light cast upon musical engagement and its outcomes. Methods: We describe how a concern with flourishing, as opposed to a concern with more conventional understandings of ‘health’ versus ‘illness’, can help to illuminate some of otherwise invisible processes by which music ‘helps’. R...