Psychoeducation has quite generally the claim to translate complicated-sounding medical or scientific facts into a language understandable for the layman. Patients and also relatives should thus be put in a position to be able to assess exactly what, for example, diagnoses or therapy suggestions are all about.
What is psychoeducation?
Psychoeducation, in general, aims to translate complicated-sounding medical or scientific facts into language that is understandable to the layperson. The word eduction comes from the Latin language, educare translated means to be led out. So it is meant to move and lead patients out of a state of inexperience and ignorance into a safe state of knowledge. Psychoeducation is also understood as a guide to self-help, to correct self-assessment, and encourages self-responsible action. Unfortunately, the high demands of psychoeducation cannot always be adequately implemented in everyday clinical practice, both in outpatient and inpatient settings. Psychoeducation is still not included in medical studies, or only marginally, and so patients with certain life-changing diagnoses often feel helpless and left alone. However, a change in thinking is now taking place in the healthcare system, which experts believe is also due to the passing of the so-called Patients’ Rights Act. Only patients who understand the nature of an illness can make decisions on their own responsibility or understand the necessary treatment steps of the doctor. Psychoeducation aims to enable patients of all medical specialties to really understand, with regard to diagnostics, therapy planning and coping with illness. A great deal of time must be invested in this process.
Function, effect, and goals
The essence of psychoeducation is a therapeutically guided accompaniment of patients and, if necessary, their relatives on the way to more knowledge and expertise about their own illness. Necessary treatment measures for certain diseases or self-help strategies are also part of the accompanying process of psychoeducation, which usually takes place over a longer period of time. Ideally, psychoeducation should have a holistic focus and also allow patients to look beyond their own illness. Only very few clinics have their own trained psychoeducators to deal with patients’ legitimate concerns. However, patients should not be afraid to aggressively demand the necessary information about the nature and treatment options of their illness. A good psychoeducational process is not considered complete until the patient is, so to speak, an expert on his or her own illness and has acquired expert knowledge about it. In medical parlance, the term psychoeducation only began to appear more frequently in the 1980s. It is an anglicism, so the term was adopted from English and has since facilitated international scientific exchange on the subject. For the first time, an in-depth form of psychoeducation was applied in psychiatry because psychotic or psychiatric clinical pictures in particular were not properly understood by patients in terms of their massive impact on life. From this purely psychiatric psychoeducation, it was then extended to other medical areas, so that today, for example, there is also talk of internal or orthopedic psychoeducation. In the clinical field, patients today often encounter psychoeducational groups, but often under completely different names. For example, psychoeducation is often concealed behind family groups, psychosis groups or information groups on certain clinical pictures. Self-help groups under professional guidance and leadership also frequently use psychoeducational elements for coping with illnesses and for a better understanding of disease patterns. Pychoeducation can therefore take the form of group meetings, but this is not necessarily mandatory, because there are different forms of psychoeducation. The psychoeducational individual conversation is certainly the most common form. The therapist tries to explain certain forms of therapy or the background of a disease to a patient or his relatives in a way that is as understandable and clear as possible.During the psychoeducational process, a question and answer session can and should take place; it should explicitly not be a mere lecture or even a monologue by the therapist. Psychoeducation in a group has often proven to be extremely helpful, because patients often share the same fate of a certain disease and can additionally exchange information with each other. This can support the recovery process and help to better cope with crisis situations in the future.
Risks and special features
Psychoeducation is especially helpful when illnesses are particularly psychologically stressful. These can be psychiatric diseases, but also physical diseases such as diabetes, tinnitus, neurodermatitis, asthma, or cancer, which in turn affect the psyche. Nevertheless, participation in a psychoeducational group is not suitable for all patients. If the ability to think, concentrate or pay attention is impaired in the context of an acute schizophrenic psychosis, then psychoeducation could even lead to a worsening of the clinical picture. Over-excited,manic or very anxious patients also cannot be given psychoeducational counseling. In these cases, however, where patients themselves cannot be reached by educational means, it has proved useful to train their relatives accordingly. This is because relatives have an important support function at home, and if they are well instructed in psychoeducation, the risk of relapse from mental illness can often be significantly reduced. Ideally, relatives are trained psychoeducationally as co-therapists before the discharge of a mentally ill patient. The long-term goal of any psychoeducation must be to inform and instruct patients so well that complaints can be assigned correctly and in a timely manner and, over the years, they learn to cope better and better with a chronic illness.
