Clinical holistic medicine: holistic treatment of mental disorders.
We believe that holistic medicine can be used for patients with mental health disorders. With holistic psychiatry, it is possible to help the mentally ill patient to heal existentially. As in holistic medicine, the methods are love or intense care, winning the trust of the patient, getting permission to give support and holding, and daring to be fully at the patient's service. Our clinical experiences have led us to believe that mental health patients can heal if only you can make him or her feel the existential pain at its full depth, understand what the message of the suffering is, and let go of all the negative attitudes and beliefs connected with the disease. Many mentally ill young people would benefit from a few hours of existential holistic processing in order to confront the core existential pains. To help the mentally ill patient, you must understand the level of responsibility and help process the old traumas that made the patient escape responsibility for his or her own life and destiny. To guide the work, we have developed a responsibility scale going from (1) free perception over (2) emotional pain to (3) psychic death (denial of life purpose) further down to (4) escape and (5) denial to (6) destruction of own perception and (7) hallucination further down to (8) coma, suicide, and unconsciousness. This scale seems to be a valuable tool to understand the state of consciousness and the nature of the process of healing that the patient must go through.
Ventegodt
Soren
S
Nordic School of Holistic Medicine and Quality of Life Research Center, Teglgårdstraede 4-8, DK-1452 Copenhagen K, Denmark. ventegodt@livskvalitet.org
Andersen
Niels Jorgen
NJ
Neikrug
Shimshon
S
Kandel
Isack
I
Merrick
Joav
J
D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000628:therapy; D005086:Existentialism / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006694:Holistic Health; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D008960:Models, Psychological; D019964:Mood Disorders / Q000628:therapy; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000379:methods; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000628:therapy