A view from Riggs: treatment resistance and patient authority--VII. A team approach to treatment resistance

Treatment resistant patients frequently require treatment modalities beyond combined psychopharmacology and individual psychotherapy. They often require a team effort to manage crises, contain anxiety, and create a psychological space for examining the impact and meaning of behavior. The use of a treatment team as an adjunctive therapeutic modality helps individual team members understand regressions as repetitions of family dynamics, unearths the underlying meaning of behavior, engages patients' authority, and prioritizes the importance of relationships in effecting change. Through engagement with team members and with the team leader's authority, patients may assume responsibility for their behavior, reevaluate familiar roles, and increase self-awareness and psychological integration. The team helps its members identify, bear, and metabolize negative countertransference, address associated anxieties realistically, and optimize the environment for change.