© 2004 Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine
Commentary
Gresham Professor and Consultant Psychiatrist, Maudsley Hospital, Westways Clinic, 49 St James Road, Croydon CR9 2RR, UK; r.persaud@iop.kcl.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The view of the cognitive behavioural therapist (the new dominant paradigm in psychiatry) is that it’s not what happens to you in life which leads to stress or upset—more it’s how you interpret what’s happened to you. Psychotherapists frequently employ a technique called "reframing" whereby a negative life event can be reconstrued so as to render it less threatening and upsetting. Some self help gurus from an American persuasion even take this approach to an extreme with the catch phrase "how can I make this problem more perfect"—in other words crisis often represents an opportunity—if you know how to get past the emotional turmoil, recover your composure, and seize the advantages which might conceivably lie among the wreckage.
These sentiments may seem inappropriate when we think of the tragedy of Harold Shipman, but the huge losses may have been easier to bear if the correct lessons could have been learnt
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
eLetters:
Read all eLetters
- Medical profession is already paying the price for its poor public relations skills
- Kieran M Walsh
- Postgrad Med J Online, 16 Jul 2004 [Full text]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Read responses to this article
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
