Effects of biological explanations for mental disorders on clinicians' empathy
Effects of biological explanations for mental disorders on clinicians' empathy
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1414058111
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发表时间：
2014-12-16
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Ahn, Woo-kyoung
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Lebowitz, Matthew S.;Ahn, Woo-kyoung
人们越来越多地从生物学机制方面了解精神障碍。我们研究了对患者症状的这种生物学解释将如何影响心理健康临床医生的同理心（治疗提供者与患者之间关系的重要组成部分）以及他们的临床判断和建议。在一系列研究中，美国临床医生阅读了潜在患者的描述，这些患者的症状可以通过生物或社会心理信息来解释。人们认为生物学解释可以让患者显得不那么对自己的疾病负责，这可能会增加临床医生的同理心。相反，生物学解释引起的同理心明显较少。这些结果与其他研究和理论相一致，这些研究和理论表明，精神病理学的生物学解释可能会加剧对患者的看法，认为他们是异常的，与其他人群不同，值得社会排斥，甚至不完全是人类。尽管向生物医学概念化的持续转变有很多好处，但我们的结果揭示了意想不到的负面后果。
Mental disorders are increasingly understood in terms of biological mechanisms. We examined how such biological explanations of patients' symptoms would affect mental health clinicians' empathy-a crucial component of the relationship between treatment-providers and patients-as well as their clinical judgments and recommendations. In a series of studies, US clinicians read descriptions of potential patients whose symptoms were explained using either biological or psychosocial information. Biological explanations have been thought to make patients appear less accountable for their disorders, which could increase clinicians' empathy. To the contrary, biological explanations evoked significantly less empathy. These results are consistent with other research and theory that has suggested that biological accounts of psychopathology can exacerbate perceptions of patients as abnormal, distinct from the rest of the population, meriting social exclusion, and even less than fully human. Although the ongoing shift toward biomedical conceptualizations has many benefits, our results reveal unintended negative consequences.