Focusing on relationship – is there room for another paradigm in Psychiatric Intensive Care?

Abstract

One of the most regularly used terms within policy guidelines, mission statements and healthcare settings in general these days, is ‘person-centred’. Disappointingly it is often used as little more than a buzz word or politically correct term. If it is used to convey certain ideas, then these can be anything from concepts of partnership, patient choice, personalised care, to representing humanistic ideas and conveying a holistic approach to care. There is, however, another way in which the term ‘person-centred’ could be used in healthcare settings. It could convey the values, philosophy and practice of the person-centred approach as formulated by Carl Rogers and his co-workers in the middle of the last century – an approach which is as radical now as it was then; an approach that challenges the dominant biomedical paradigm of modern psychiatric practice; and an approach that, in my view, is desperately needed to counteract the dehumanising effects (for both patients and professionals) of much mental health care within fragmented systems dictated by political and economic agendas.