Beyond Psychiatric Symptoms

Psychic pain goes far beyond the set of psychiatric symptoms that afflict our patients. Actually, there is much debate in our field as to what gives rise to the other; is psychic pain a by-product of psychiatric symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, or are symptoms a manifestation of psychic pain, namely that we develop symptoms by virtue that the psychic pain is unbearable. Although many of our therapeutic interventions tend to target symptom removal, or at least their alleviation, fewer efforts are placed on understanding the patients’ psychic pain. During this workshop "Beyond Psychiatric Symptoms", the presenters will give a brief outline of what we know about psychic pain and the challenge that is faced in reaching it. With extensive use of audiovisually recorded clinical interviews, we will expand on these concepts. A special emphasis will be placed on the training of health professionals to be able to identify, tolerate, and work with such pain on a daily basis. As this workshop will present vignettes of actual clinical interviews with patients, any form of recording or taking pictures throughout the presentation is absolutely forbidden to preserve patients’ confidentiality.