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Treatment Resistance in Psychiatry pp 273–293Cite as

Creative, Person-Centered Psychopharmacology for Treatment Resistance in Psychiatry

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Abstract

Treatment resistance in psychiatry is one of the most important issues facing psychiatrists and their patients alike. It is not only a highly important topic but a very hot and controversial one as well. There is no generally accepted agreement of what defines treatment resistance for any of the individual mental disorders; thus it is a metaphor with different meanings which implies negative, pessimistic, and frightening connotations. This metaphor complicates treatment in psychiatry as well as the lives of patients with the so-called treatment-resistant mental disorders. Treatment resistance as a construct should be reconsidered as well as delaying “wait-and-see” and “monotherapy before polytherapy” treatment strategies. Changing treatment philosophy may be a critical step toward overcoming what some sign as “therapeutic stagnation in psychiatry” associated with a high rate of treatment failures. A “paradigm shift” is needed from the mechanistic, formistic, and reductionistic ways of thinking of technical, nomothetic, and impersonal psychopharmacology to contextual, systemic, and creative thinking with a new treatment holodigm of individualized and person-centered psychopharmacology. The best treatments are those that timely utilize and integrate multiple therapeutic modalities. The concept of creative, person-centered narrative psychopharmacotherapy gives a hope for increasing treatment effectiveness and efficiency in psychiatry and thus overcome treatment failures and resistance.

Parts of the chapter were previously published in Person Centered Psychiatry, pp. 235–245, Springer 2016.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Centre Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Miro Jakovljevic

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  1. Miro Jakovljevic
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  1. Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, Korea University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Yong-Ku Kim

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Jakovljevic, M. (2019). Creative, Person-Centered Psychopharmacology for Treatment Resistance in Psychiatry. In: Kim, YK. (eds) Treatment Resistance in Psychiatry. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4358-1_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4358-1_19

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