Introduction to Person-Centered Psychiatry

Abstract

Having the whole person as the center and goal of health and health care may be seen as the core concept of person-centered psychiatry and, more broadly, person-centered medicine. In order to appreciate the significance of person-centeredness, it is important to understand the meaning, implications, challenges, and opportunities of person-centered care, as well as to consider multiple conceptual perspectives and the collaborative institutional process of its ongoing development, as is done in this book. Person-centered psychiatry and medicine may be traced back to how medicine was conceived and practiced in ancient civilizations and through the present time, including efforts to redress contemporary reductionist distortions in clinical medicine and public health. With a sense of paramount ethical commitment, many leaders in medicine have recognized the interdependency of science and humanism and reaffirmed a psychiatry and medicine of the person, for the person, by the person, and with the person. Recent systematic explorations of person-centered care has identified as key concepts in addition to its ethical imperative: a holistic framework to understand health and illness, cultural awareness and responsiveness, a communicational and relationship focus at all levels, individualization of care, establishment of common ground among clinicians, patient, and family to arrive at and formulate a joint diagnosis and shared care decisions, people-centered organization of integrated care, and person-centered health education and research. The collaborative construction of person centered psychiatry and medicine has been unfolding over the past decade. In 2005, the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) established a broad institutional program on Psychiatry for the Person, building on the articulation of science and humanism as the essential joint motivation for the WPA since its foundation in 1950. This initiative was later extended to medicine at large in close collaboration with the World Health Organization, the World Medical Association, the International Council of Nurses, and the International Alliance of Patients’ Organizations, among a number of other international health institutions. From a process of annual Geneva Conferences on Person Centered Medicine since 2008 emerged an International Network and then an International College of Person Centered Medicine. Step-wise maturation of this process has led to the establishment of an International Journal of Person Centered Medicine, the organization of International Congresses in different corners of the world complementing the Geneva Conferences, and the publication of Declarations extending the work and impact of Conferences and Congresses. As proclaimed by WHO Director General Gro Brundtland in 2001, there is no health without mental health. Mental health has indeed a special place and role in person-centered medicine. This refers to the various activities through which mental health has contributed to the conceptualization and experience of person-centered medicine and the role that an organized “psychiatry for the person” has had in the collaborative construction of person-centered medicine. Some of the recent concrete contributions of person-centered medicine to clinical practice are in the mental health field: the Person-centered Integrative Diagnosis model, the Latin American Guide for Psychiatric Diagnosis (GLADP) and the present book on Person-Centered Psychiatry. The purpose of this book is to present authoritatively the emerging field of Person-Centered Psychiatry. It is organized under the aegis of the International College of Person-Centered Medicine and published by Springer Verlag in Heidelberg and New York. The WPA and the World Federation for Mental Health are officially co-sponsoring it. Eighteen WPA Scientific Sections are engaged in its authorship. Its five editors and 83 chapter authors come from across the world and are among the most experienced scholars and clinicians in the new field. The volume includes 40 chapters organized into the following five sections: Principles, Diagnosis and Assessment, Person-centered Care Approaches, Person-centered Care for Specific Mental Conditions, and Special Topics. This book emerges from a broad conceptual and collaborative process. Its authorship and structure reflects these features.