SPECIAL ARTICLE   

Minerva Psichiatrica 2019 September;60(3):137-44

DOI: 10.23736/S0391-1772.19.02022-3

Copyright © 2019 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Physician, heal thyself: a manifesto for a sagacious and mindfulness cure for the embroiled world of psychotherapy

Bruce KIRKCALDY ¹ ✉, Sayyed M. FATEMI ^{2, 3}

¹ International Center for the Study of Occupational and Mental Health, Düsseldorf, Germany; ² Department of Psychology, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran; ³ York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

This article enlists the burdens of the psychotherapy for the therapists and elucidates how the toils and encumbrances of psychotherapeutic task can give rise to demanding expectations and stressful situations for therapists. In line with explicating the sundry array of challenges on the psychotherapeutic tasks for psychotherapists, the article proposes alternative modes of dealing with the stressful situations in a psychotherapeutic relationship and propounds how the implementation of mindfulness may facilitate the process of creating wellbeing for therapists who find themselves ineluctably entangled with the stress oriented task of doing psychotherapy.

KEY WORDS: History of medicine; Psychotherapy; Occupational stress; Professional burnout