Alvaro Barrera
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.
