Brief strategic psychotherapy and narrative medicine: an integrated model

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
 Comparative analysis of the aspects of interconnection and differentiation/protocol integration with narrative medicine.
 Empirical evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of strategic narrative techniques on individual cases in terms of the development of corrective emotional experiences aimed at reducing/remitting the symptomatic picture and raising the level of psychophysical and socio-relational well-being of the patients treated.
 METHODOLOGY
 Action research, operational diagnosis, narrative techniques of the reference strategic intervention protocols.
 RESULTS
 On the basis of the applied protocols, a complete remission of symptoms was observed in the psychopathological areas treated, with an increase in coping functions and adaptive modalities in the treated cases of hypochondriacal disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, attested from follow-up to 6, 12 and 24 months after the end of the treatment.
 CONCLUSIONS
 In the two cases studied, the use of strategic narrative techniques, with their peculiar characterizations, appears to be effective as a tool for inducing corrective emotional experiences necessary for change and improvement in the psychopathological structure of patients and their possible application, in the context of principals of health psychology, in integration-continuity with narrative medicine.