Attachment-Based Treatment of Chronic Medical Disorders: Learning from Stress-Based Mental Health Conditions

Adaptation to stressful conditions has been considered as a cause of chronic medical disorders for many years. However, the failure of adaptation involved in the genesis of these disorders has never been connected to mental health conditions that have the same adaptation failures to stress. A failure in the type of attachment in which parents help their children adapt to fearful conditions, which involves the hippocampus and amygdala regions in the brain, might be an underlying cause for both chronic medical disorders and mental health conditions. This paper will provide evidence for the underlying continuity of these conditions, as they relate to a similar type of attachment failure, as it impedes successful adaptation to stress. To demonstrate this continuity, case material is provided on patients with both conditions who are given model treatments that resolve each sequentially, indicating that they have a common attachment-based root. The importance of treating patients’ attachment-based deficits for both their medical and mental health issues concurrently supports using alternative, holistic medical strategies and attachment-based psychotherapy, in which the therapist can experience the fear of the patient and then advocate for them to help them resolve their problems for both types of conditions. The importance of using these therapies in treating chronic medical and mental health conditions is strongly supported by this evidence. These interventions are not adjunctive to the medical treatments but are as primary as the medical interventions in developing more pervasive resolution of the conditions.