Coping and Complaining: Attachment and the Language of Disease

Good clinical practice is impossible without an understanding of the ways in which patients present their complaints. Patients have their own styles of coping and of expressing their concerns, and without a clear understanding of these the clinician may find successful and swift diagnosis and treatment much harder to achieve.Coping and Complainingprovides essential guidance for clinicians on how to identify various coping styles, and how to improve the quality of discourse with people of different backgrounds and ages. Drawing on a diverse range of evidence from such areas as developmental psychology, and theories on learning and memory, this title provides essential information on identification of patients' coping styles, focusing on such areas as: the latest developments in attachment theory; the neurobiology of emotional development, and the biology of language development; primary processed in early development; communication, role play, the moral order of the consultation, and emotional firstaid; as well as consequences for preventive medicine. Coping and Complainingpresents stimulating new approaches to consultations with patients and creative new ways of looking at health promotion.

Simon Wilkinson leads the adolescent services at the Sogn Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Hospital, Oslo, Norway. A Yorkshireman by birth and inclination, educated and trained in Cambridge, London and Edinburgh, he now lives in Oslo