[Existential hope: a phenomenological key to understanding depression?] / Existentiële hoop: een fenomenologisch leidmotief in het verstaan van depressie?

BACKGROUND: Researchers that try to identify the relationship between hope and mental health often lack a conceptual understanding of 'hope'. Nonetheless, experiences of despair that are central in depression seem to surpass our everyday understanding of hope and hopelessness. How can this despair be understood and recognized? OBJECTIVE To describe depression through a phenomenological understanding of hope and to explore how this insight relates to our current definition of depression as a mood disorder, as well as to clinical practice.
RESULTS: Existential hope arises spontaneously in our experience of the world and through the relationship with significant others. A significant part of the experience of depression amounts to the loss of existential hope. Depressive despair features a radically shifted experiential structure, which seems to be absent in demoralisation; this advocates the view of depression as a 'disorder of attunement'. A therapeutic relationship can recover the loss by cultivating a new sense of possibilities.
CONCLUSION: The idea of existential hope provides a new conceptual framework to understand the experience of depression as well as the possibility for its recovery.

[Psychopathology and film: a valuable interaction?]. / Psychopathologie en film: een waardevolle interactie?

BACKGROUND: Film or film fragments are often used in psychopathology education. However, so far there have been very few articles that have discussed the benefits and limitations of using films to explain or illustrate psychopathology. Although numerous films involves psychopathology in varying degrees, it is not clear how we can use films for psychopathology education. AIM: To examine the advantages, limitations and possible methods of using film as a means of increasing our knowledge and understanding of psychiatric illnesses. METHOD: We discuss five examples that illustrate the interaction of film and psychopathology. On the one hand we explain how the psychopathological concepts are used in each film and on the other hand we explain which aspects of each film are valuable aids for teaching psychopathology. RESULTS: The use of film makes it possible to introduce the following topics in psychopathological teaching programme: holistic psychiatric reasoning, phenomenology and the subjective experience, the recognition of psychopathological prototypes and the importance of context. CONCLUSION: There is undoubtedly an analogy between the method we have chosen for teaching psychopathology with the help of films and the holistic approach of the psychiatrist and his or her team. We believe psychopathology education can benefit from films and we would recommend our colleagues to use it in this way.