Improving Patient Treatment with Attachment Theory

This book emphasizes interpersonal relationships as a frequently overlooked, yet crucial element in today’s healthcare system and describes the utility of attachment theory in understanding and managing patients with medical and surgical illness. Sections on the fundamentals of attachment theory, specific patient populations, attachment-based interventions, and future directions comprehensively reflect our current knowledge. The summarized research demonstrates the value of attachment theory in approaching such common issues as non-adherence, strain in the healthcare worker–patient relationship, and somatoform complaints, as well as in modelling maladaptive stress responses and subsequent illness vulnerability. The contributing authors are internationally recognized researchers and teachers who have sought to make this volume accessible to anyone interested in using the positive aspects of interpersonal relationships to maximum advantage in the practice of healthcare.

• Attachment theory
• Consultation liaison psychiatry
• Difficult patient
• Doctor-patient relationship
• Psychosomatics

“This is a wonderful and clinically practical guide to understanding and using attachment theory for nonpsychiatric healthcare professionals. … This is an excellent primer for a grand rounds talk to any medical or surgical group to help them understand how their patients react when under duress. … I highly recommend this book for all healthcare professionals, even psychiatric residents or students beginning a consult liaison rotation in the hospital.” (Brett C. Plyler, Doody's Book Reviews, May, 2016)

• Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Mount Sinai Hosp. , Toronto, Canada

  Jonathan Hunter, Robert Maunder

Policies and ethics