The Existential Dispatch, Issue No. 34

A Word from the Founding Director

A week can turn on a single question: when a person says, “I don’t know whether I really have choices,” what kind of care can still be offered? This issue follows that question through multimorbidity, illness narratives, patient safety, and the systems that fund and scale care. Existential inquiry begins not with a theory of the person, but with attentiveness to how a life is being lived under conditions it did not choose.

Existential Thinker of the Issue

Miguel de Unamuno

“The conflict between reason and life is something more than a doubt. … This other doubt is a passionate doubt, it is the eternal conflict between reason and feeling, science and life, logic and biotic.” — Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life: gutenberg.org

Clinically, Unamuno helps us resist the urge to treat uncertainty as a defect that must quickly be closed. Patients and families often have to decide while reason, hope, fear, evidence, and attachment pull in different directions; good care can make room for that tension without abandoning clarity, responsibility, or action.

In Academia

Choice at the end of life is relational, not merely individual. A longitudinal study of older adults with multimorbidity, their relatives, and healthcare professionals found that end-of-life healthcare choices are ongoing, existential, and shaped by fragmented systems. The authors call for closer attention to patients’ and relatives’ lifeworlds so that care can better align with their needs and values. academic.oup.com

In Film, Literature and Culture

Three Farewells, Isabel Coixet’s new drama, follows Marta after illness changes her experience of time, desire, food, and ordinary life. Adapted from Michela Murgia’s Tre ciotole: Rituali per un anno di crisi, the film offers a counter-image to stories that reduce illness to diagnosis or survival alone. sortiraparis.com

In Healthcare (Global)

World Patient Safety Day takes place on September 17 under the theme “Safe care for life!” The WHO’s 2026 campaign focuses on noncommunicable diseases and asks health systems to treat people living with long-term conditions as partners in safety across diagnosis, treatment, follow-up, homes, and communities. The existential point is simple: safety preserves agency over time, not only the absence of an immediate error. who.int

Funding and Grant Opportunities

Canadian Cancer Society — Investigator-Initiated Clinical Trials Program. The current opportunity page lists a September 16, 2026 deadline at 11:59 p.m. EST; only applicants with an eligible abstract registration can submit a full application. Check the current eligibility and registration requirements before preparing a proposal. cancer.ca

Canadian Cancer Society — Summit Discovery Grants 2026. The listed deadline is September 23, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. EST. For projects connecting cancer research with access, lived experience, communication, or care systems, the programme is a useful prompt to ask how discovery becomes meaningful in practice. cancer.ca

Conferences and Events

Mental Health America Conference 2026. Taking place October 8–9 in Washington, D.C., under the theme “More Good Days, Together,” the meeting will explore access, whole health, workforce transformation, innovation, and lived experience. Its framing invites a question familiar to existential psychiatry: who gets to define a good day, and what support makes that definition possible? mhanational.org

Startup and Innovation Watch

Mental Health Innovation Showcase. On September 15 at London’s Harley Street Health District, five selected start-ups will present to investors, providers, regulators, insurers, and health-innovation networks. The event is worth watching as a test of whether new tools create more room for patients to speak and choose—or simply make care more efficient at overlooking them. harleystreethealthdistrict.com

To Close: An Existential Joke

Why did Unamuno refuse to let the clinic replace uncertainty with a checkbox?

Because he wanted to keep the conflict between reason and life—and the EHR only had one field: “other.”