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Think Pieces

Vol. 1 No. 1: December issue

How did we get here? ‘It does not require a big brain to understand.’: The ‘Greek Crisis’, care, and health care

  • Giorgos Kostakiotis
  • Deanna J. Trakas
DOI
https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.1.1.208
Submitted
January 12, 2014
Published
01-Dec-2014

Abstract

The economic crisis in Greece, which officially showed itself in 2008, is blamed for a wide variety of negative changes in the country’s social, political, and moral fabric. Health care – and the deficits of a medical system already under stress even before the crisis – are particularly central in public complaint and political debate. Issues of community and family care have emerged with a strength that challenges the conventions of earlier generations. This essay shifts the gaze away from the well-documented indictments of the deficiencies of the Greek health care system to look at the ways in which families and communities are working to provide care within the changing landscape.