Building Person-centered Medicine through Dialogue and Partnerships: Perspective from the International Network for Person-centered Medicine

Main Article Content

Juan Mezzich

Abstract

Person-centered medicine is to a large extent relationship-centered medicine. This involves, first, the understanding that a dialogic attitude lies at the foundation of medicine for the person and therefore represents a commitment to promote this interactive and communicational attitude in all aspects of clinical care. It also involves pursuing the development of partnerships as a natural path and mechanism for constructing the reality and the future of this initiative and its organization. Most immediately, these considerations informed the selection of Collaboration across Specialties, Disciplines and Programs as the overall theme for the Third Geneva Conference on Person Centered Medicine. At the same time, one can usefully reflect on how such considerations have emerged from the work of medicine and health pioneers who perceived and placed the whole person in context at the center of our field. And how these ideas are being nurtured by current innovative work on clinical procedures and strengthened by the cooperation of many global medical and health organizations and a growing community of scholars.

Article Details

Section
Third Geneva Conference on Person-Centered Medicine: Conceptual Perspectives
Author Biography

Juan Mezzich, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York University

Born in Lima, Peru, of Yugoslavian and Peruvian ancestries. Medical graduate of Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University and president of the University Student Association.Psychiatric residency training, M.Sc. in Academic Psychiatry, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, all at Ohio State University, and diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.Professorial positions in psychiatry, sequentially at Stanford University, California, the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine of New York University. Currently also Attending Psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital and  Bronx VA Medical Center, New York.Doctor Honoris Causa at Athens University (Greece), Cordoba University (Argentina), Cayetano Heredia University (Peru), and Cluj-Napoca University, Timisoara University and Oradea University (Romania). Honorary Professorship at Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University and University of Belgrade (Serbia), World Psychiatric Association Honorary Fellow, Simon Bolivar Award of the American Psychiatric Association, Past-President of the American Society of Hispanic Psychiatry, honorary member/fellow of several national psychiatric associations, and visiting professor and lecturer at academic institutions over 80 countries across all continents.Earlier academic and international work: Secretary & Chair (1983-1996) and Honorary Chair (2008-) of the WPA Section on Classification and Diagnostic Assessment; member of the ICD-10 Work Group and the DSM-IV Task Force; chair of the US National Institute of Mental Health Group on Culture, Diagnosis and Care; consultant on the development of the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders (3rd Ed.), the Japanese Modification of ICD-10, the Third Cuban Glossary of Psychiatry, and the Latin American Guide for Psychiatric Diagnosis (GLADP); and director of the 1993-2003 WPA International Guidelines for Diagnostic Assessment (IGDA).Author/coauthor of over 200 scientific journal articles and book chapters (including sections on diagnosis,   epidemiology, and culture in Kaplan & Sadock's and Tasman et al’s Textbooks of Psychiatry), and of 25 books and monographs, including Conceptual Bases of Psychiatry for the Person (in press), Conceptual Explorations on Person-centered Medicine (2010), Psychiatric Diagnosis: Challenges and Prospects (2009), Cultural Formulation: A Reader for Psychiatric Diagnosis (2008), Psychiatry and Sexual Health: An Integrative Approach (2006), Philosophical & Methodological Bases of Psychiatric Diagnosis (2005), Guía Latinoamericana de Diagnóstico Psiquiátrico (GLADP) (APAL, 2004), WPA International Guidelines for Diagnostic Assessment (IGDA) (2003), Cultural Psychiatry: International Perspectives (2001), Culture and Psychiatric Diagnosis: A DSM-IV Perspective (1996), Psychiatric Epidemiology (1994). Editor, Psychopathology, (2002-2010), Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Int’l J Person Centered Medicine, (2010- ), Associate Editor, Int’l J of Integrated Care, (2009- ), and editorial board member of 15 other medical journals in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa.WPA Secretary General (1996-2002), Vice-President and President-Elect (2002-2005), President (2005-2008), and Council Member (2008- ). President of the International Network for Person-centered Medicine (2009- ).Current Work: 1) Person-centered Psychiatry and Medicine: Organization of the 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 Geneva Conferences on Person-centered Medicine, and Conferences in London (2007), Paris (2008), and Uppsala (2008) on Psychiatry for the Person; thematic publication of several monographs and journal editorials & papers, and initiating the International Network for Person-centered Medicine in collaboration with the World Medical Association, the World Health Organization and 25 other international medical and health bodies, 2) International diagnostic systems, particularly ICD-11, Person-centered Integrative Diagnosis, and Latin American Guide for Psychiatric Diagnosis, through monographs, journal papers, and conferences, 3) Culture-informed clinical concepts and procedures, including the Cultural Formulation, the Personal Health Scale, the Multi-ethnic Bicultural Scale, and the Multicultural Quality of Life Index through publications, conferences and research projects.