Full Description
Empathy in Clinical Psychiatry and Mental Health Care focuses on empathy in clinical psychiatry and mental health care, bringing together the challenging reality of day-to-day clinical mental health work with conceptual and neuroscientific work on empathy. Such an interface is crucial because empathy is both ethically and epistemically central to mental health care. Mental health professionals' effort of trying to understand the distressing experiences of patients will help instil a sense of dignity and respect for their suffering. Empathy is also epistemically central to psychiatry because the knowledge gained through the empathy effort helps to inform the collaborative care plan to be developed with the patient.
The book's first section sets the conceptual, epistemological and social neuroscience scene, including and acknowledging empathy's potential risks and problems. Its second section addresses empathy's role in medicine, descriptive psychopathology, psychological interventions, as well as the neurobiological basis of its disorders. The third section examines empathy in clinical situations such as psychosis, suicidal behaviour, personality disorders, alcohol or substance use disorders, forensic psychiatry, and the care of autistic people. Its final section describes the role of empathy in the work of mental health nurses, occupational therapists, clinical psychiatrists, and mental health law lawyers, with a final chapter covering empathy in mental health care interventions provided by conversational artificial intelligence. The book closes with a call to place clinical empathy at the centre of mental health care provision and research to increase effectiveness, outcomes and patient experience.
Contents
Alvaro Barrera: Introduction
Section 1: Historical, Conceptual, and Neuroscience Matters
1: Ivana Markova: Historical Epistemology of Empathy
2: Idalmis Santiesteban: Empathy from a social neuroscience perspective
3: Sarah Songhorian: The problems of empathy
Section 2: Empathy in Medicine and Mental Health Care
4: Stewart Mercer: Empathy in medicine
5: Femi Oyebode: Empathy and descriptive psychopathology
6: Femi Oyebode: Empathy: clinical assessment and the diagnostic process
7: Stephanie D. Preston: Disorders of empathy and their neurobiological basis
8: Bryony Insua Summerhays: Empathy and psychological interventions
Section 3: Empathy and the Care of Some Patients Groups
9: Richard Lakeman: Empathy and the care of people experiencing psychosis
10: Karen Lascelles: Empathy and the care of people with suicidal behaviour
11: Lisle Scott: Empathy and the care of people with a diagnosis of personality disorder
12: Gail Critchlow: Empathy and the care of people with a diagnosis of alcohol or substance use disorder
13: Elizabeth Sheppard: Empathy, the care of autistic people, and the double empathy problem
14: Robert Cornish: Empathy in forensic psychiatry
Section 4: Empathy in Some Mental Health Care Contexts
15: Carol Gee: Mental health nursing and empathy
16: Jonathan Gibbons: The foundations of good practice: an occupational therapist s reflections on the use of an empathetic approach in modern psychiatric settings
17: Lisa Vaughan: Mental Health Act law, practice, and empathy
18: Jana Sedlakova, Andrea Ferrario, and Manuel Trachsel: Empathy in mental health care interventions by conversational artificial intelligence
19: Alvaro Barrera: Clinical empathy and the work of general adult psychiatrists
Alvaro Barrera: Final remarks
