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The abandonment of the sick
The illness memoir is now a well-established literary genre. This phenomenon gives the subliminal impression that as a society, we are anxious to do away with taboos around sickness, and to support the sick. The truth, to our discredit, is that many people are keener on reading books about the illness of strangers than helping friends with major illness. The stigma of psychiatric illness is well-recognised, but that associated with physical illness much less so. In high-income countries, sick people and their families are in many respects socially isolated; even worse, society does not generally recognise this issue.
