{"id":7876,"date":"2011-01-29T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-01-29T16:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=7876"},"modified":"2013-12-07T22:42:52","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T05:42:52","slug":"empathy-physical-mental-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/empathy-physical-mental-health-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Empathy in Physical and Mental Health Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes small things make the biggest difference. One place this applies is in the doctor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office. New research<\/a> published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal<\/a> (CMAJ) finds that a few simple gestures of empathy in the doctor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office greatly impact the outcome of treatment. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that empathy directly impacts physical health. Rather, patients who are treated with empathy are more motivated to follow through with their treatment plan and feel more satisfied with the care they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve received. Though medical doctors specialize in treating the body, how they approach the patient as a whole<\/em> has a pronounced impact.<\/p>\n

If empathy makes such a difference in physical medicine, imagine its importance in the context of therapy and counseling. A qualified psychotherapist will have the necessary educational and licensing credentials, but effective, sincere and client-centered therapy involves more than knowledge and experience. It involves sincere empathy and compassion on a very human level. We know that compassion is one of the earliest social traits that pre-humans evolved to possess. Compassion and empathy are closely related, and both play large roles in our cultural development, family bonds, and relationships.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Relationship\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is the key word here, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an accurate description of how patients or clients should be able to feel when they meet with a health care professional\u00e2\u20ac\u201dboth therapists and physicians included. Empathy is an essential component of forming a true human relationship: at the very least, we must recognize and feel for<\/em> what the other person is going through. In a doctor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office, this mean that the doctor doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just recognize physical pain or discomfort in its physiological sense, but also in how it impacts that person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s day-to-day life. In therapy, it means recognizing that people are complex, vulnerable and valuable, and that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing the best they know how. Empathy itself doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t solve emotional puzzles or cure physical ills, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an essential ingredient in positive, holistic relationships between individuals and care providers of any kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes small things make the biggest difference. One place this applies is in the doctor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office. New research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) finds that a few simple gestures of empathy in the doctor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office greatly impact the outcome of treatment. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that empathy directly impacts physical health. Rather, patients who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[31,306,27],"class_list":["post-7876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-therapy-news","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-holistic-psychotherapy","tag-psychotherapy-models"],"acf":{"author_show":false,"author_name":"","author_role":"","author_avatar":null,"author_profile_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}