A person-centred approach in medicine to reduce the psychosocial and existential burden of chronic and life-threatening medical illness

Abstract

The psychiatric, psychosocial, and existential/spiritual pain determined by chronic medical disorders, especially if in advanced stages, have been repeatedly underlined. The right to approach patients as persons, rather than symptoms of organs to be repaired, has also been reported, from Paul Tournier to Karl Jaspers, in opposition and contrast with the technically-enhanced evidence-based domain of sciences that have reduced the patients to ‘objects’ and weakened the physician’s identity deprived of its ethical value of meeting, listening, and treating subjects. The paper will discuss the main psychosocial and existential burden related to chronic and advanced medical illnesses, and the diagnostic and therapeutic implications for a dignity preserving care within a person-centred approach in medicine, examined in terms of care of the person (of the person’s whole health), for the person (for the fulfilment of the person’s health aspirations), by the person (with physicians extending themselves as total human beings), and with the person (working respectfully with the medically ill person).

Keywords:

• Person-centred medicine
• psychiatry
• psychosomatic medicine
• dignity
• spiritual pain
• psychosocial burden

Acknowledgements

The present paper is the result of reflections and shared consensus seminars, symposia, and conferences within the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), Section on Psycho-Oncology & Palliative Care and Section on Psychiatry, Medicine & Primary Care, and the International College of Person-Center Medicine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Ferrara Research Funding (FAR).