Dispatches · Issue 10 · Newsletter ·
The Existential Dispatch, Issue No. 10
In healthcare, the words “support” and “care” are often used as abstractions. Thinker of the issue: Simone de Beauvoir.
A Word from the Founding Director
In healthcare, the words “support” and “care” are often used as abstractions. This week, I’m interested in what happens when we make them concrete: Who is seen after an incident, who is heard after a loss, and what kinds of help actually restore a sense of agency and belonging?
Today’s dispatch holds a through-line: integrating what we know about bodies and brains without losing the lived world; strengthening post-incident support without flattening moral injury into “resilience”; and remembering that identity and freedom are never purely private—they’re made in relation.
Existential Thinker of the Issue
Simone de Beauvoir
“A person is not born but becomes a woman.”
Why it matters clinically: De Beauvoir’s insight is that identity is not a fixed essence but a becoming shaped by social worlds, norms, and power. In cancer care and psychosocial oncology, this helps us listen for how diagnosis, treatment, and institutional routines can quietly re-script a patient’s (or clinician’s) possibilities—what they feel permitted to hope for, ask for, or refuse. The clinical task is not to “correct” identity, but to widen room for authentic choice within real constraints. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
In Academia
Neuroexistential psychotherapy (Frontiers in Psychology, June 29, 2026)
A recent open-access paper argues for a “neuroexistential” bridge: existential therapy’s focus on meaning, freedom, and lived experience can be enriched by neuropsychology’s attention to embodiment, time, space, attunement, and relationship—without reducing persons to brains. For clinicians, it’s a reminder that integration can deepen presence: we can use scientific perspectives to refine interventions while still protecting the irreducible human realities of finitude and choice. Frontiers
In Film, Literature and Culture
A small prompt for the weekend: re-read (or rewatch) one scene that deals with “becoming” rather than “being.”
Try this: pick a moment in a novel, memoir, or film where a character changes not by insight alone, but because a relationship, institution, or constraint shifts. Ask: What did the world make possible here—and what did it foreclose?
In Healthcare (Global)
Post-incident support for staff after workplace incidents (NHS Employers, July 2026)
NHS Employers has published a Post-Incident Support Framework focused on practical, timely, and equitable support for staff affected by workplace incidents including physical violence, verbal abuse, online abuse, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. Existentially, post-incident care is not only about “coping”; it’s about restoring voice, safety, moral coherence, and belonging—so people can return to their work without being silently reshaped by fear. The Academy for Healthcare Science (reporting on NHS Employers)
Funding and Grant Opportunities
Transformative Healthcare Instrument 2026 (EIT Health)
EIT Health is offering €300,000–€500,000 to support European healthcare startups (biotech, medtech, digital health, AI, diagnostics) advancing development and commercialisation toward the next fundraising stage. Key dates listed include platform access and an information session on July 15, 2026. European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)
Conferences and Events
Critical Care Canada Forum 2026 (Call for Abstracts)
The Critical Care Canada Forum runs November 23–25, 2026, with a final abstract submission deadline of September 1, 2026; final acceptance notices are listed for September 21, 2026 (subject to change). If you’re working on existential dimensions of intensive care—finitude, decision-making, family meaning-making—this is a venue where those questions can meet systems and outcomes. Critical Care Canada Forum
Startup and Innovation Watch
MSK Therapeutics Accelerator (cohort kickoff announcement)
Memorial Sloan Kettering announced the kickoff of its 2026 Therapeutics Accelerator cohort—one signal among many that large clinical institutions are tightening the loop between care environments and translation. For existential clinicians and scholars, the question is how innovation cultures can retain room for dignity, values, and meaning—not only speed. MSKCC
To Close: An Existential Joke
In therapy I said, “I’m afraid of commitment.” My therapist replied, “We can work on that.” I said, “Let me get back to you.”