Human based psychiatry in clinical practice

Abstract

Human based medicine and human based psychiatry are contemporary approaches to the theory and practice of medicine and psychiatry. It is a post-modern way of re-thinking psychiatry enriched by humanities, especially philosophy. In questioning the current research and praxis of psychiatry, it shares the statement by Wittgenstein, “what a curious attitude scientists have″: ‘We still don’t know that; but it is knowable and it is only a matter of time before we get to know it as if that went without saying. So, here, our problematic is not only ‘what and how much we do‘ but also ‘how and why we do‘. The clinician‘s main challenge is harmonizing the current available ‘scientific universal knowledge‘ and the ‘uniqueness’ of that specific person in need of help. In achieving this task, the importance of the synthesis of the clinician's perspective and patient's perspective will be elaborated using depression as a case example. It will be stated that an empathetic understanding of depression, through a subjective, experiential and narrative-centered approach must become a primary concern by building a joint, ongoing, re-construction process of clinical assessment, formulation and treatment. There is no meta-theory explaining “the clinical truth”. From the perspective of a human based psychiatric practice, in fact, we do not need such a meta-theory, but instead, we need multi-level/multi-dimensional approaches, also taking the narrative into consideration. We suggest the clinicians to be modest, honest and respectful towards “the clinical truth”.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.