Mindful medical practice and the therapeutic alliance

Abstract

This review article focuses on how the therapeutic relationship is central to clinician-client/patient relationships in psychiatry as well as other medical and psychotherapeutic encounters.  Crucial to this relationship is the alliance formed between the caregiver and the person who seeks their care.  The threats to the therapeutic alliance in psychiatry are discussed as is the importance of facing them. How mindfulness enables clinicians to build such bonds and foster well-being in themselves and in those they treat is examined in the context of quantitative and qualitative studies.