Interpersonal view on physical illnesses and mental disorders

Abstract

Physical illnesses and psychological disorders are typically viewed as individual phenomena, with causes for the diseases lying in the organism, either in medical conditions (severe infections, cancer, coronary heart problems, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, etc.) or in pathological mental processes within the person (dysfunctional information processing, deficient social skills, deficient emotion-regulation skills, etc.). In consequence, the treatment of physical and psychological disorders is commonly individual- centered, aiming to improve health conditions within the person affected by the disease. In this article a systemic-transactional understanding of disorders is presented, where both partners are viewed as suffering from the disease but also able to engage in joint coping efforts ("we-disease"). The notion of we-disease is explained and its implications for clinical work is outlined.