Rosa Ritunnano would usually be the one posing the questions, but it was my turn when
we met at Birmingham University s leafy campus. Ritunnano is part of a movement championing
the relevance of phenomenology for psychiatry. “Phenomenology can offer psychiatry
a conceptual toolbox that can allow us to co-construct meaning and create a channel
of dialogue between clinicians and patients, because when we use very medicalised
language that neglects the experience, then that doesn’t really reflect what the person
is living, so there s a dissonance that gets in the way of the therapeutic process”,
she explains.
Effective clinical care for patients with psychosis means understanding the ‘lived experience’ of their delusions, say researchers at the Un.