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A Special Approach to Psychiatric Disorders and Pathologies

In Germany, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has been accepted and recognised as applicable. This marks a turning point in the way this country and society views people with mental disorders.
 
Psychotics now have the possibility of refusing medical treatment, although mentally ill people cannot refuse internment. However, the German Parliament sees this as a step forward: it is still possible to lock up dangerous individuals, and the monitoring of those who refuse medication is ultimately only a form of guardianship. 
 
The German Constitutional Court had ruled, in a judgment dating back several decades, that differentiation in the offers made to the mentally ill and the somatic sick was not compatible with human dignity.  
There is a tendency in Germany to distinguish between individuals with somatic disorders or illnesses and individuals with mental illnesses.
The result of this particular conception of mental illness in Germany is the somatic approach of psychiatry, which leads logically to a treatment of mental disorders and pathologies with a psychosomatic approach. 
In this approach, prevention and early diagnosis are favoured. The treatments and accompaniment, on the other hand, are generally based on natural methods, relying on the mind/body link. 
 

The prevalence of psychosomatics in Germany.

The German psychiatric system has the particularity of taking a special interest in the mind/body connection, especially in the treatment of psychiatric disorders and pathologies. The main consequence of this approach is the prevalence of the psychosomatic approach in German psychiatric care. 
While France, by way of comparison, focuses on the treatment of symptoms, the German approach, due to its Bismarckian heritage, focuses on prevention, with methods and treatments based on the mind/body link. 
The mental health system is therefore linked with many other actors, such as the German national education system, balneotherapy centres, general medicine, in order to diagnose patients as early as possible, and to offer accompaniment based on a psychosomatic approach.