[Psychotherapy in internal medicine? Systematic considerations on the problem]

Apart from pharmacotherapy and physiotherapy psychotherapy should become an important constituent of the therapy of the internal specialist. The theoretical basis for this gives the model of a biopsychosocial disease. With its help the restriction both to the biological and to the psychosocial level of human ill-being can be overcome. Psychotherapy shall not substitute but supplement pharmacotherapy and physiotherapy. In internal diseases it is always the therapy of a psychic factor significant for the development and/or the course of the disease within a complex therapy conception. In these cases psychotherapeutic methods must satisfy the same demands as all other therapeutic methods.