Purpose -This paper seeks to examine the value of teaching about mental illness through the use of literature.Design/methodology/approach -Using the examples of two colleges in eastern USA that focus on educating students for healthcare careers, the paper examines two different course formats for using literature to teach about mental illness: a course that places the topic within the larger context of medicine and literature; and a freestanding madness and literature course.Findings -While professional education tends towards specialization, it can lead to a monocultural vision that limits approaches to patients and problems alike. Courses integrating mental illness and literature were found to be effective means of counteracting this trend.Research limitations/implications -The study is limited to two healthcare-centred colleges in eastern USA.Practical implications -For mental health clinicians and healthcare professionals in general, literature broadens the scope of both perspectives and analytical tools for understanding mental disorders and responses to them.Originality/value -While literature courses often contain such themes as mental illness, courses that truly integrate literature with mental illness meet a growing need for interdisciplinary education as a means of preparing more flexibly thinking healthcare professionals.

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Illness narrative has often been found to play a positive role in both patients' and providers' efforts to find meaning in the illness experience. However, illness narrative can sometimes become counterproductive, even pathological, particularly in cases of medical mystery--cases wherein biopsychosocial factors blur the distinction between bodily dysfunction and somatizing behavior. In this article, the author draws attention to two examples of medical mystery, the clinical presentation of medically unexplained symptoms, and the popular reality television program Mystery Diagnosis, to demonstrate the potentially harmful effects of illness narrative. The medical mystery's complex narrative structure reflects and tends to reinforce providers' and patients' mistaken assumptions, anxieties, and conflicts in ways which obstruct, rather than facilitate, healing.

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