RESUMEN
Empathy has gained popularity in the general population and the scientific world during the past decade. Recently, several researchers found a significant decrease in empathy scores of healthcare students (notably medical students) and recommend promoting empathy skills in several fields of education. The current paper presents a new model of the empathic process: a stenography of empathy compelling scientific data and contemporary conceptions. Indeed, we combined all pioneer researchers' conceptions of empathy (Davis, Decety, Batson, Preston & de Waal) into an integrative model. This model is centered on the empathizer (i.e., a person observing a target experiencing emotions) and displays how all empathy components are articulated, explaining the individuals' general functioning and how the process might become dysfunctional. We illustrated applications of the model with three clinical examples (i.e., burnout, psychopathy, and borderline personality disorders) to display how empathy is related to psychopathological symptoms. We believe this new dynamic and sequential model would be helpful in explaining how empathy works, which is of great interest to healthcare students, clinicians, researchers, and academics.
Asunto(s)
Trastorno de Personalidad Limítrofe , Estudiantes de Medicina , Humanos , Empatía , Emociones , Trastorno de Personalidad Antisocial , Estudiantes de Medicina/psicologíaRESUMEN
OBJECTIVES: Health students usually report to experience stress during their formation. This is due to their exposure to patient's disease or death, to their learning of interpersonal relationships, and to the discovery of health practitioner's responsibility. Anhedonia represents a deficit in experiencing pleasure that is promoted by stressful living conditions. We hypothesized that health formations promote anhedonia. Our objectives have consisted in measuring anhedonia and analyzing its variation and heterogeneity among health students. METHODS: The Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) was used to assess anhedonia and its anticipatory and consummatory dimensions. TEPS corresponds to an 18-item questionnaire, the score of which is based on a 6-point Likert scale. Low score indicates a high anhedonia propensity. Score differences were analyzed by considering gender, curriculum and formation as independent variables. A cluster analysis was used to explore anhedonia heterogeneity among our sample. RESULTS: We collected 1231 responses. Our data confirm French TEPS as a reliable tool for anhedonia evaluation in dental and medical students. Statistical analyses reveal a significant effect of gender (male>female), curriculum (clinical>preclinical) and formation (dental>medical) on anhedonia propensity. Cluster analysis highlights four sub-groups of students characterized by increasing anhedonia traits and by different gender, formation and curriculum proportions. CONCLUSION: This work describes the first analysis of anhedonia manifestation during dental and medical studies in France. The consequences of our findings for the comprehension of dental and medical students' mental health during their formation are discussed.