Psychoeducation as an Opportunity for Patients, Psychiatrists, and Psychiatric Educators: Why Do We Ignore It?
Abstract
Providing information and educating patients about their illness and options for treatment is an essential part of medical practice. Little is known about medical students' and residents' training in these skills, however.
It is well known that cooperation, effective communication, and a good relationship between the psychiatrist, the patient, and the patient's family improve the prognosis of severe mental illness. If the patient and family members are expected to become competent partners and to cooperate in long-term treatment, psychiatrists have to share information about the illness and its treatment with them.
As providers of care, psychiatrists obviously have the knowledge and experience that patients and their families do not. The only way to bridge this natural knowledge gap is to share the information in a comprehensible and structured way, in what is known today as psychoeducation.