Psychiatric implications of internal medicine

Conclusions

Only a few of the more glaring examples of the psychiatric implications and complications found in these general hospital cases have been briefly outlined.

Surely, it seems to the writer, the manner in which these cases were studied proves how exceedingly complex modern medicine is and more especially draws attention to the extreme complexity of the human beings with which it deals.

When environmental (including sociological) factors operate in harmony with the personality, health results; while, in disease, one finds harmony replaced by conflict. To understand this conflict and reduce it to harmony, is one of the huge tasks which the modern physician must accomplish.

We know that Paracelsus and Van Helmont many years ago recognized the rôle of emotional and mental factors in disease, but only in the past few decades have we assembled any real information which can be applied in a practical way.

The concept that body and mind, or, perhaps we might better say, emotions, are separate and distinct units must be scrapped. As Adolf Meyer says, it must be recognized that man functions as an integrated whole. No disease is wholly physical or wholly mental, but rather all disease is both physical and mental. Both factors must receive due consideration.

The life problems of the patient are often the key to the cause of the illness, and the efficient physician will seek for and attempt to remove these causes or, if this is impossible, help the patient to adjust to them.