A recent study suggests that doctors often diminish effective time with patients by talking about themselves in a manner that does not improve the patient visit and is sometimes disruptive to it. Good care requires hearing what the patient has to say, as the doctor cannot set proper goals for a visit without knowing the patient's agenda. Listening to the patient is the key both to good patient care and to caring for the patient.

In this article, we explore the possibility of adding a new role to the clinical encounter: an illness doula. Even though research and education in medical humanities and narrative medicine have made improvements in humanizing healthcare, progress is slow and ongoing. There needs to be an intervention in the practice of healthcare now for people currently going through the system. An illness doula, like a birth doula, would facilitate and insure that attention is paid to the personal needs and desires (...) of the patient in the present system. We envision illness doulas having the ability and availability to accompany the patient throughout the healthcare process, to help communicate with clinicians, and to ensure that patient preferences are understood and respected along the way. We discuss how this idea emerged through the clinical encounters of two of our authors, the possibilities and limitations of creating a new role for illness doulas, and the logistics of how to put this new role into play. (shrink)

The field of health promotions faces considerable ethical and programmatic challenge – and we believe opportunity – in addressing the relative normativity of the concept(s) of health and its professional handling. To date, distinctions of objective and subjective indicants of “health” have fostered normative tension(s) within the utilitarian ethics of health promotions, which we opine to be anathema to the ultimate goal(s) of attaining and sustaining healthy individuals and societies. Objective and subjective metrics and values should be reconciled, as reciprocal (...) and complementary on both idiosyncratic and systemic levels. In this light, we propose that a philosophical and ethical approach, based primarily upon Schmitz’s New Phenomenology and its specific understanding of subjectivity could afford epistemological bases for non-normative engagement of health promotion within a structural–functional framework of ethics. We dialectically address its potential benefit, limitations and value for health promotion and health care ethics and present an approach which points towards a more substantial encouragement of diversity through the legitimation of subjectivity. (shrink)

In 2008, researchers reported that Timothy Brown , a man with HIV infection and leukemia, received a stem-cell transplant that removed HIV from his body as far as can be detected. In 2013, an infant born with HIV infection received anti-retroviral treatment shortly after birth, but was then lost to the health care system for the next six months. When tested for HIV upon return, the child had no detectable viral load despite cessation of treatment. These remarkable clinical developments have (...) helped reinvigorate the field of ‘HIV cure’ research. (shrink)

Over the past decades, mood enhancement effects of various drugs and neuromodulation technologies have been proclaimed. If one day highly effective methods for significantly altering and elevating one’s mood are available, it is conceivable that the demand for them will be considerable. One urgent concern will then be what role physicians should play in providing such services. The concern can be extended from literature on controversial demands for aesthetic surgery. According to Margaret Little, physicians should be aware that certain aesthetic (...) enhancement requests reflect immoral social norms and ideals. By granting such requests, she argues, doctors render themselves complicit to a collective ‘evil’. In this paper, we wish to question the extent to which physicians, psychiatrists and/or neurosurgeons should play a role as ‘moral gatekeepers’ in dealing with suspect demands and norms underlying potential desires to alter one’s mood or character. We investigate and discuss the nature and limits of physician responsibilities in reference to various hypothetical and intuitively problematic mood enhancement requests. (shrink)

A human being is the simultaneous composite of several different levels of being, from atomic and subatomic to the level of complex social interaction, and these levels are nested within the individual hierarchically (lower levels giving rise to higher levels, etc.). One of the most important and influential approaches developed in the history of science has been that of systems theory and systemic thinking, in which the different levels of the hierarchy, and the interactions between those levels, are considered simultaneously. (...) Although this model provides a comprehensive view of biological being, the transition from one level to the other is not well defined in it. Uexküll and Pauli (Advances: Journal of the Institute for 417 the Advancement of Health 3:158–174, 1986) suggested that semiosis is the translator of the events from one level to the other. From a psychological point of view, a myriad of semiotic events happen inside an individual, and it has been suggested that among other semiotic events, inner speech plays an important role in mediating personal agency. Dialogical theories of the self, Jungian psychology and hypnosis research evidence show that there is a semiotic multiplicity in human agency and consciousness, and that these multiple streams are all converge to a central semiotic singularity. I argue in this paper that by taking a biosemiotic point of view, human ‘agency’ may be defined as the ability of an individual to direct the incoming and internal streams of semioses and the ability to create an integrative and superordinate new stream of semiosis in addition to the upwardly and downwardly component ones, and how such a view might open a new door for research into the concept of human ‘personality’ and ‘agency’. (shrink)

Muslim physicians and Islamic jurists analyze the moral dimensions of biomedicine using different tools and processes. While the deliberations of these two classes of experts involve judgments about the deliverables of the other's respective fields, Islamic jurists and Muslim physicians rarely engage in discussions about the constructs and epistemic frameworks that motivate their analyses. The lack of dialogue creates gaps in knowledge and leads to imprecise guidance. In order to address these discursive and conceptual gaps we describe the sources of (...) knowledge and reasoning employed by Islamic jurists and clinicians to resolve the question of when a patient must seek healthcare. As we examine both the scriptural evidence and legal reasoning of jurists and the types of medical evidence used by clinicians to address the same question, we draw attention to the epistemic frameworks and constructs at play and identify how constructs from one field may sharpen the deliberative exercises of the other. Hence our work advances discourses at the intersection of Islam and medicine and offers building blocks for a comprehensive Islamic framework that fully integrates the deliverables of medical science within the deliberations of Islamic jurists. (shrink)

While loneliness has been linked to various mental and physical health problems, the sense in which loneliness is a cause of these conditions has so far attracted little philosophical attention. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing research on health effects of loneliness and therapeutic interventions through current approaches to causality. To deal with the problem of causality between psychological, social, and biological variables, the paper endorses a biopsychosocial model of health and disease. I will investigate how three (...) main approaches to causality used in psychiatry and public health apply to loneliness: interventionism, mechanisms, and dispositional theories. Interventionism can specify whether loneliness causes specific effects, or whether a treatment works, incorporating results from randomized controlled trials. Mechanisms help explain how loneliness brings about negative health effects, spelling out psychological processes involved in lonely social cognition. Dispositional approaches help stress particular features of loneliness connected to negative social interactions, such as defensiveness. I will conclude by showing that previous research alongside emerging approaches to health effects of loneliness lend themselves to analysis in terms of the causal models under discussion. (shrink)

Patient-centeredness can be considered a popular, and at the same time “fuzzy”, concept. Scientists have proposed different definitions and models. The present article studies scientific publications that discuss the meaning of patient-centeredness to identify different “discourses” of patient-centeredness. Three discourses are presented; the first is labelled as “caring for patients”, the second as “empowering patients” and the third as “being responsive”. Each of these discourses has different things to say about the why of patient-centeredness; the patient’s identity; the role of (...) the healthcare professional; responsibilities for medical decision-making, and the role of health information. This article compares and contrasts the discourses in ways that allow us to see differences that matter for practitioners in healthcare. On the basis of a relational constructionist philosophy, it is argued that discursive diversity is both an inevitable and a potentially valuable aspect of conversations in healthcare. We are therefore invited to center the challenge of dealing with diversity in productive ways. This article ends with a discussion of the practical implications of the discourse analysis for projects that aim to make healthcare more patient-centered. Debates on patient-centered “Health Information Exchange” are used to explain the need for a recognition of different discourses of patient-centeredness and a reflexive stance towards them. (shrink)

The biopsychosocial (BPS) model has been of considerable utility to those researching health and illness. This has been particularly the case for critical realists and those with a systemic orientation to their work. Whilst the strengths of the model are conceded in this article, its limitations are also examined. These relate to its ontological sophistication being compromised by its proneness to epistemological naivety. It is a model to explain the emergence of disease and disability, not a reflexive theory applicable to (...) the whole field of health research. This tension is linked to the emergence of a re-orientation of medical knowledge away from bio-medical reductionism. From the outset the model was not about a general critique, or a grand theory, of health and illness. Instead it was a useful intervention, on the part of medical practitioners, like George Engel and Adolf Meyer, to create a reformed medical model on behalf of their profession. Case studies of the problematics of diagnosis and medicalization are offered to illuminate the limitations of the BPS model for health researchers. (shrink)

The present narrative review addresses issues concerning the defining criteria and conceptual underpinnings of pain catastrophizing. To date, the concept of pain catastrophizing has been extensively used in many clinical and experimental contexts and it is considered as one of the most important psychological correlate of pain chronicity and disability. Although its extensive use, we are still facing important problems related to its defining criteria and conceptual understanding. At present, there is no general theoretical agreement of what catastrophizing really is. (...) The lack of a consensus on its definition and conceptual issues has important consequences on the choice of the pain management approaches, defining and identifying problems, and promoting novel research. Clinical and research work in absence of a common theoretical ground is often trivial. It is very surprising that clinical and experimental work has grown extensively in the past years, without a common ground in the form of a clear definition of pain catastrophizing and overview of its conceptual basis. Improving the efficacy and efficiency of pan catastrophizing related treatments requires an understanding of the theoretical construct. So far, most interventions have only demonstrated modest effects in reducing pain catastrophizing. Therefore, clarifying the construct may be an important precursor for developing more targeted and effective interventions, thereby easing some of the burden related to this aspect of pain. In our review, we have extracted and de-constructed common elements that emerge from different theoretical models with the aim to understand the concept of catastrophizing, which components can be modulated by psychological interventions, and the general role in pain processing. The analysis of the literature has indicated essential key elements to explain pain catastrophizing: emotional regulation, catastrophic worry, rumination, behavioral inhibition and behavioral activation systems, and interoceptive sensitivity. The present paper attempts to integrate these key elements with the aim to re-compose and unify the concept within a modern biopsychosocial interpretation of catastrophizing. (shrink)

The theory of separation assumes, with provocation, that an organization cannot reconcile profits and social function. Organizations can reconcile these two, apparently contrasting, missions, by considering emotions, especially moral emotions, to create a genuine motivation for focusing on goals beyond simple economic earnings and protecting organizations or groups of people from dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors, as well as considering the important role of the stakeholder accountability. Using the PRISMA method, we created a review of records using keywords relating to a (...) socio-emotional value within organizations, with a particular focus on the last 20 years. We used the SCOPUS database and, after removing irrelevant records, we used the VOSviewer tool to create a cluster map of different areas in this topic. Some records cite the socio-emotional value that is related to organizational and employee suffering, while other articles consider it a positive factor that improves performance and prevents problems in organizations. (shrink)

This paper considers proposals for developing ‘co-productive’ medical partnerships, within the UK National Health Service (NHS), concentrating in particular on the potential problem involved in combining professional and lay conceptions of health. Much of the literature that advocates the introduction of co-productive healthcare partnerships assumes that medical professionals and patients share, or can easily come to share, a common set of beliefs about what is valuable with regard to health interventions and outcomes. However, a substantial literature documents the contestability of (...) the concept of health, particular across professional and lay divides. We suggest that this potential disagreement ought to be taken seriously, and suggest that the prospect of a co-productive NHS in which patients and professionals act in partnership is threatened by the existence of unresolved epistemic differences. We suggest that part of the solution may lie in re-framing this potential disagreement in the terms provided by Engel’s bio-psycho-social account of health, and demonstrate how support for this account can be grounded upon a critical realist foundation. What we call a ‘stratified conception of health’ reveals the potential complementarity between health beliefs which may have at first seemed to be essentially contradictory. We consider some of the practical implications this idea has for conceiving and creating co-productive medical partnerships. (shrink)

Pain is multidimensional, complex; it affects the ontological structures of the human being and exceeds spatio-temporal boundaries. Therefore, it is universally felt with an impact in the past, moving to the present, and projecting to the future. There are efforts to ease or completely eliminate the impact of pain, however, a good understand- ing of its biological and anthropological dimensions is necessary for proper orientation of such undertakings. This article identifies some social, cultural, medical-scientific, and individual factors that account for (...) the changes in modes of experiencing and managing pain. It posits that there is a general unpreparedness on the physical, psychological, and spiritual levels for continued pain in the future. It thus analyses factors that need to be learnt in order to promote favourable alterations in mental attitudes, pain sensitivity, and tolerance to pain. Preparing for a future of pain requires interdisciplinary reflection on the bodily, emotional, and spiritual components that constitute the pain experience so as to re-direct its trajectory. (shrink)

What position on dualism does medicine require? Our understanding of that ques- tion has been dictated by holism, as defined by the biopsychosocial model, since the late twentieth century. Unfortunately, holism was characterized at the start with con- fused definitions of ‘dualism’ and ‘reductionism’, and that problem has led to a deep, unrecognized conceptual split in the medical professions. Some insist that holism is a nonreductionist approach that aligns with some form of dualism, while others insist it’s a reductionist view (...) that sets out to eradicate dualism. It’s important to consider each version. Nonreductive holism is philosophically consistent and clinically unprob- lematic. Reductive holism, however, is conceptually incoherent—yet it is the basis for the common idea that the boundary between medical and mental health disorders must be vague. When we trace that idea through to its implementation in medical practice, we find evidence that it compromises the safety of patient care in the large portion of cases where clinicians grapple with diagnosis at the boundary between psychiatry and medicine. Having established that medicine must embrace some form of nonreduc- tionism, I argue that Chalmers’ naturalistic dualism is a stronger prima facie candidate than the nonreductive alternatives. Regardless of which form of nonreductionism we prefer, some philosophical corrections are needed to give medicine a safe and coherent foundation. (shrink)

This paper examines the philosophical substructure to the theoretical conflicts that permeate contemporary mental health care in the UK. Theoretical conflicts are treated here as those that arise among practitioners holding divergent theoretical orientations towards the phenomena being treated. Such conflicts, although steeped in history, have become revitalized by recent attempts at integrating mental health services that have forced diversely trained practitioners to work collaboratively together, often under one roof. Part I of this paper examines how the history of these (...) conflicts can be understood as a tension between, on the one hand, the medical model and its use by the dominant profession of psychiatry, and on the other, those alternative models and practitioners in some way differentiated from the medical model camp. Examples will be given from recent policy and research to highlight the prevalence of this tension in contemporary practice. Part II of this paper explores the deeper commonalities that lay beneath the theoretical conflict outlined in Part I. These commonalities will be shown to be apart of a captivating framework that has continued to grip the conflict since its inception. By exposing this underlying framework--and the motivations inherent therein--the topic of integration appears in wholly different light, allowing a renewed philosophical basis for integration to emerge. (shrink)

This paper aims at explicating the role of the connections and interactions between health, well being and beauty. The primary goal of all medical approaches, including the classic biomedical and humanistic or humane approaches, is to restore or create health, whereby medical approaches that include prevention go beyond the mere restoration of health to include the preservation of health. Equating well-being and thus health with a largely self-determined and joyful life, then not only does a healthy life become a beautiful (...) life, a beautiful life also becomes a healthy life! By bringing Beauty into the health discourse, we are entering the field of aesthetics in general and social aesthetics in particular. As the beautiful is not just a decorative element of life but a genuine source of human strength, it gives us the strength and power we need to implement and achieve all that we then experience as “well-being” and that is called a healthy life. Therefore a further development of a human-based medicine is needed, a medicine that focuses not on a disease construct but which places a human being as a whole, with all his potential and limitations at the heart of diagnostic and therapeutic efforts. The noblest therapeutic goal of this kind of medicine can only be the restoration or preservation of a comprehensive state of health in the sense of complete physical, mental and social well-being, in the sense of opening up the possibility for a mostly autonomous and joyful life. (shrink)

*The opinions expressed are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy of the National Institutes of Health, the Public Health Service, or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Psychedelic-assisted Psychotherapy combines the use of psychedelic compounds, such as psilocybin, with psychotherapy. PAP has shown some promise as a novel treatment for Major Depressive Disorder, and empirical research suggests that its efficacy turns on the altered states induced by psychedelic compounds. In this paper we draw on the literature of phenomenology to explain the therapeutic potential of psychedelic experiences. Svenaeus characterises mental illness as a form of suffering that entails three distinct but related experiences of alienation or “unhomelike being-in-the-world”: (...) illness suffering, which relates to embodiment; existential suffering, which relates to self-narratives, and political suffering, which relates to social relationships. Ratcliffe further characterises the experience of MDD in phenomenological terms as a loss of pre-intentional possibility that manifests as excessive noematic feeling in the experience of embodiment, restrictive narratives in the construction of self, and disconnectedness in experience of the social world. We contend that PAP ameliorates the suffering associated with MDD by inducing and consolidating a state of broadened pre-intentional possibility—one that entails sudden, profound and enduring changes in embodiment, self-narratives, and social experience. We argue further that this phenomenological account is consistent with a bio-psycho-social model of mental health and illness, and we frame it as an argument supporting the plausibility of recent claims about treatment success. This helps to justify ongoing future empirical research in this setting. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an argument for cultivating cheerfulness as a remedy to sadness and other emotions, which, in turn, can provide some relief to certain cases of depression. My thesis has two tasks: first, to establish the link between cheerfulness and sadness, and second, to establish the link between sadness and depression. In the course of accomplishing the first task, I show that a remedy of cultivating cheerfulness to counter sadness is supported by philosophers as diverse as Thomas (...) Aquinas, Baruch Spinoza, and David Hume in their writings on the passions. I also show that my argument can generalize to promote the cultivation of other emotions. In the course of accomplishing the second task, I consider different models of depression and how the emotions are related to depression. The purpose of this paper is to offer conceptual, philosophical support that is consistent with the most current empirical data on depression. (shrink)

This article presents seven principles that have guided our thinking about emotional intelligence, some of them new. We have reformulated our original ability model here guided by these principles, clarified earlier statements of the model that were unclear, and revised portions of it in response to current research. In this revision, we also positioned emotional intelligence amidst other hot intelligences including personal and social intelligences, and examined the implications of the changes to the model. We discuss the present and future (...) of the concept of emotional intelligence as a mental ability. (shrink)

The utilization of alternative medical therapies and practitioners has increased dramatically in the U.S. in the last two to three decades. This trend seems paradoxical when one considers the rapid advances taking place in biomedical knowledge and technology during this same time period. Observers both inside and outside of the medical profession have attempted to explain the rising popularity of alternative medicine by proposing that it signals a growing sense of dissatisfaction and disenchantment with professional biomedical practices on the part (...) of the lay public. This paper challenges this thesis and offers an alternative explanation, arguing that the rise of alternative medicine is a consequence of the success and expanding influence of biomedicine rather than its failure and declining authority. The argument presented draws primarily on Ulrich Beck’s “risk society” perspective and theory of “reflexive modernization,” with specific attention to his analysis of the “reflexive scientization” process. The application of this perspective allows us to understand the emergence and development of alternative medicine as an unanticipated consequence of the process of reflexive biomedicalization in the late modern era. (shrink)

Intersubjectivity, the cooperation of two or more minds, is basic to human behavior, yet eludes the grasp of psychiatry. This paper traces the dilemma to the “problem of other minds” assumed with the epistemologies of modern science. It presents the solution of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, known for his treatment of other minds in terms of “human agreement in language.”Unlike recent studies of “Wittgenstein's psychology,” this one reviews the Philosophical Investigations' “private language argument,” the crux of his mature views on mind. (...) It reads that argument as recording his shift from the modern egocentric paradigm of mind to an intersubjective one.The paper contrasts the merits of Wittgenstein's reduction of subject and object to grammar with the problems of Freud's metapsychological reduction. It shows how Wittgenstein's intersubjective method avoids the excesses of behaviorism and phenomenology, offering a specifically human way to adapt mechanistic and interpretive means to the communicative ends of psychiatry. (shrink)

Despite a wealth of findings that psychotherapy is an effective psychological intervention the principal mechanisms of psychotherapy change are still in debate. It has been suggested that all forms of psychotherapy provide a context which enables clients to transform the meaning of their experiences and symptoms in such a way as to help clients to feel better, and function more adaptively. However, psychotherapy is not the only healthcare intervention that has been associated with ‘meaning’: the reason why placebo have effects (...) has also been proposed to be a ‘meaning response’. Thus, it has been argued that the meaning of treatments has a central impact on beneficial (and by extension, negative) health-related responses. In light of the strong empirical support of a contextual understanding of psychotherapy and its effects, the aim of this conceptual analysis is to examine the role of meaning and its transformation in psychotherapy – in general – and within three different, commonly-used psychotherapy modalities. (shrink)

A distinguishing characteristic of the biomedical model is its compartmentalized view of man. This way of seeing human beings has its origin in Greek thought; it was stated by Descartes and to this day it still considers humans as beings composed of distinct entities combined into a certain form. Because of this observation, one began to believe that the focus of a health treatment could be exclusively on the affected area of the body, without the need to pay attention to (...) patient’s subjectivity. By seeing pain as a merely sensory response, this model was not capable of encompassing chronic pain, since the latter is a complex process that can occur independently of tissue damage. As of the second half of the twentieth century, when it became impossible to deny the relationship between psyche and soma, the current understanding of chronic pain emerges: that of chronic pain as an individual experience, the result of a sum of physical, psychological, and social factors that, for this reason, cannot be approached separately from the individual who expresses pain. This understanding has allowed a significant improvement in perspective, emphasizing the characteristic of pain as an individual experience. However, the understanding of chronic pain as a sum of factors corresponds to the current way of seeing the process of falling ill, for its conception holds a Cartesian duality and the positivist premise of a single reality. For phenomenology, on the other hand, the individual in his/her unity is more than a simple sum of parts. Phenomenology sees a human being as an intending entity, in which body, mind, and the world are intertwined and constitute each other mutually, thus establishing the human being’s integral functioning. Therefore, a real understanding of the chronic pain process would only be possible from a phenomenological point of view at the experience lived by the individual who expresses and communicates pain. (shrink)

The coronavirus pandemic has shattered our world with increased morbidity, mortality, and personal/social sufferings. At the time of this writing, we are in a biomedical race for protective equipment, viral testing, and vaccine creation in an effort to respond to COVID threats. But what is the role of health humanities in these viral times? This article works though interdisciplinary connections between health humanities, the planetary health movement, and environmental humanities to conceptualize the emergence of “planetary health humanities.” The goal of (...) this affinity linkage is to re-story health humanities toward promotion of planetary health and community well-being. Wellbeing is critical because the main driver of environmental destruction and decreasing planetary health is coming from non-sustainable definitions of wellbeing. We need the arts and humanities to help reimagine the possibility of a sustainable community wellbeing. For health humanities, a basic role and narrative identity starts to emerge—we should become a planetary health humanities. (shrink)

Narrative medicine is one of medicine’s most important internal reforms, and it should be a critical dimension of healthcare debate. Healthcare reform must eventually ask not only how do we pay for healthcare and how do we distribute it, but more fundamentally, what kind of healthcare do we want? It must ask, in short, what are the goals of medicine? Yet, even though narrative medicine is crucial to answering these pivotal and inescapable questions, it is not easy to describe. Many (...) of its core claims go against the grain of common sense thinking about medicine. This article argues that the best way to understand narrative medicine is to tell a story that puts its emergence in historical context. (shrink)

Research and writing at the intersection of faith and medicine by now include thousands of published studies, review articles, books, chapters, and essays. Yet this emerging field has been described, from within, as disheveled on account of imprecision and lack of careful attention to conceptual and theoretical concerns. An important source of confusion is the fact that scholarship in this field constitutes two distinct literatures, or rather meta-literatures, which can be termed faith as a problematic for medicine and medicine as (...) a problematic for faith. These categories represent distinct theoretical lenses for viewing the intersection of faith and medicine. Observations about these two approaches are offered, along with insights about why the discourse on faith and medicine should become better integrated into discussions of religion and science. (shrink)

For political reasons, the social control functions of psychiatry are not openly recognized as such but are disguised as benevolent medical treatment. The roots of this disguise may be traced to the political revolutions in which the rule of man was replaced by the rule of law. This transformation generated a conflict between the desire for freedom under law and the desire for a greater degree of social control than is provided by law. Involuntary mental hospitalization is the neurotic resolution (...) of this conflict by society. The social control functions of psychiatry are disguised and justified by the medical model which describes the moral action of both psychiatrist and patient in the ostensibly value neutral language of science and medicine. The cost of this disguise is great. It negates individuals as moral agents and obscures the moral nature of the problems that psychiatrists seek to understand which, in turn, handicaps them in helping the persons they seek to assist. The task of the philosopher in this situation is honestly and critically to analyze and evaluate psychiatric language, psychiatric practices and the moral issues involved. (shrink)

Mental disorders as defined by current classifications are not fully supported by scientific evidence. It is unclear whether main disorders should be broken down into separate categories or disposed along a continuous spectrum. In the near future, new classes of mental disorders could be defined through associations of so-called abnormalities observed at the genetic, molecular and neuronal circuitry levels.

Mental health research faces a suite of unresolved challenges that have contributed to a stagnation of research efforts and treatment innovation. One such challenge is how to reliably and validly account for the subjective side of patient symptomatology, that is, the patient’s inner experiences or patient phenomenology. Providing a structured, standardised semantics for patient phenomenology would enable future research in novel directions. In this contribution, we aim at initiating a standardized approach to patient phenomenology by sketching a tentative formalisation within (...) the framework of an applied ontology, in the broader context of existing open-source Open Biomedical Ontologies resources such as the Mental Functioning Ontology. We further discuss a number of prevailing challenges and observations bearing on this task. (shrink)