Considerations on Medical-Patient Relationship in Psychiatry. Anthropo-Medical Implications

Abstract

This article attempts to briefly present aspects of the doctor-patient relationship in practice cases with the unipolar affective disorder, with or without anxiety. It also presents a case study demonstrating how the approach to a friendly relationship between treating physician and depressed patient increases compliance with treatment. The subjective observations can be applied cum grano salis in other forms of depression in different disorders (post-schizophrenic depression, depression from bipolar disorder). The therapeutic experience assimilated to the imaginative level considers every person valuable because the mere fact that he/she exists, then finds what makes it unique and respects its idiosyncrasies. The volatility of the depressed patient's state of mind requires a dynamic imagination of medical knowledge and principles, as well as the sliding between the three different instances of the physician-patient relationship during admission or interaction with the patient. In the case of depression, it can be said that each instance of the disorder is unique to every patient, like fingerprints: genetics, neurodevelopment, primary and intermediate irrational beliefs are unique to the affected individual, aspects that are of great interest in medical anthropology.