Postpsychiatry and postmodern psychotherapy: Theoretical and ethical issues in mental health care in a Polish context

The article reconstructs postpsychiatry’s core propositions and briefly describes its theoretical background and assumptions. It also presents chosen aspects of postmodern psychotherapy, which seem to be in many ways similar to postpsychiatry’s ideas. Although they are drawn from different inspirati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Theory & psychology 2018-12, Vol.28 (6), p.780-799
Main Authors: Stupak, Radosław, Dyga, Krzysztof
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
20th century
Biomedical models
Biomedicine
Contemporary problems
Ethical dilemmas
Ethics
Health research
Legal system
Meaning
Medical diagnosis
Medical ethics
Medical model
Mental disorders
Mental health
Mental health care
Mental health services
Postmodernism
Psychiatry
Psychological distress
Psychotherapy
Social environment
Traditional medicine
Treatment methods
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Summary:The article reconstructs postpsychiatry’s core propositions and briefly describes its theoretical background and assumptions. It also presents chosen aspects of postmodern psychotherapy, which seem to be in many ways similar to postpsychiatry’s ideas. Although they are drawn from different inspiration, postpsychiatry and postmodern psychotherapy seem to come to similar conclusions, especially regarding the role of the patient in the therapeutic process, the meaning of psychiatric diagnosis, and the importance of the institutional, cultural, and social contexts in mental health practice and research. The paper also aims to place postpsychiatry and postmodern psychotherapy in a Polish context, focusing on the ethical challenges faced by psychiatry and showing that some of postpsychiatry’s ideas and solutions to contemporary problems were already present in the Polish psychiatric literature of the 20th century. It also contains a brief description of the Polish social and historical context of psychiatry, as well as key aspects of the Polish legal system that relate to mental health and seem to reflect the nature of biomedical explanations of mental distress. It concludes that the model of psychiatric care postulated by “postmodern” approaches seems more ethical and scientifically and philosophically grounded and promises better treatment results than the “traditional” biomedical model.
ISSN:0959-3543
1461-7447
DOI:10.1177/0959354318802973