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Social sciences and medical humanities: the new focus of psychiatry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Dinesh Bhugra  and
Antonio Ventriglio
Dinesh Bhugra
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK, email dinesh.bhugra@kcl.ac.uk
Antonio Ventriglio
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Foggia, Foggia, Italy, email a.ventriglio@libero.it
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Abstract

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The clinical practice of psychiatry should incorporate a biopsychosocial model of illness, acknowledging both cultural and social influences on the patient's experience. Medical humanities include a number of academic disciplines that complement the clinical practice of psychiatry. The medical profession, including psychiatry, has a social responsibility to study the psychosocial context within which people become ill and have to be treated. Although the biopsychosocial model of illness has strong theoretical foundations, its application in clinical practice is limited. A new approach would be to restructure medical student teaching to include medical humanities in the first year, and to share such education with other professions.

Type
Guest Editorial
Information
BJPsych International , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , November 2015 , pp. 79 - 80
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 2015

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