A serious illness often changes the way others see us. Few, if any, relationships remain the same. The sick become more dependent on partners and family members, while more distant contacts become strained. The carers of the ill are also often isolated. This book focuses on our sense of self when ill and how infirmity plays out in our relationships with others. Neil Vickers and Derek Bolton offer an original perspective, drawing on neuroscience, psychology, psychoanalysis as well as memoirs of the ill or their carers to reveal how a sense of connectedness and group belonging can not only improve care but also make societies more resilient to illness. This is an essential book on the experience of major illness.

'A pioneering volume. For our ageing population, varieties of illness have become headline news, an ever-present talking-point for which we badly need fresh thinking. Vickers and Bolton demonstrate how the reach of medical humanities can be extended by empathy and health science. This study of the "collective psychobiological" dimensions of illness is radical in its implications. Potentially, it offers a new way forward for our understanding of the ways the human animal inter-relates in sickness and in health.' Robert McCrum, author of Every Third Thought: On Life, Death and the Endgame

'Vickers and Bolton elucidate the contradiction between the human need for caring relationships and people's tendency to pull away from those who are ill and disabled. They assemble the broadest range of studies from infant research to microsociology to neurology and epigenetics to explain why relationships between the healthy and the ill are often fraught. Readers who seek a scientific basis for medical humanities will find much of value here.' Arthur W. Frank, PhD, author of At the Will of the Body and The Wounded Storyteller

'The reaction to illness, our own and that of others to whom we are close, reveals much of what it means to be human and live in society. Such is the theme of this humane and scholarly study which has much to say about the fundamentals of caring for others, both when they are ill, and when they are well.' Michael Marmot, director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity