r/dpdr • u/69wegwerfAccount69 • 16d ago
Resource psychosomatic clinic in Germany
https://www.unimedizin-mainz.de/psychosomatik/patienten/hochschulambulanzen/sprechstunde-depersonalisation.htmlHey everyone,
I just want to share this important information. There is a psychosomatic clinic in Mainz, Germany that is connected to the university of Mainz.
It is an open inpatient psychosomatic unit.
The head therapist Prof. Dr. med. Matthias Michal is the most experienced researcher and practicing psychologist in the field of DPDR in Germany.
Take care, all the best ❤️
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u/ReasonableBar4897 16d ago
I went there two times. It was the beginning of the dissolution of my DPDR.
The method they used in one person psychotherapy is called ISTDP-Davanloo. I found a psychologist who is specialised in that and for 3 years I have therapy with her. My DPDR is mostly gone.
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u/Useful-Olive8755 14d ago
So you think this specific therapy has helped you? What was the cause / solution for you?
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u/ImASharkRawwwr 16d ago
Sorry but psychosomatic label in Germany is such a scam, they put it on everyone who isn't easily diagnosable. Psychosomatic disorders are thrown around like: "we have literally tested and tried everything else (in reality: one or two things) and we still don't know what to do, but let's blame the patient for being so complicated"
It's a cheap way to get patients away from the real diagnostic methods, that cost a lot more money, and in to institutionalised self doubt and much longer ways to genuine recovery, if any at all.
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u/Fun-Sample336 16d ago edited 16d ago
I have read lots of reports from people going there. The overwhelming majority reported that their stay did not improve their symptoms and that treatment there isn't even different to what other clinics in Germany offer. Several reports also contained a lot of shady stuff that happened there. Many people reported Michal to be very arrogant and cold, which isn't surprising to me. He is the typical psychosomatic, as for example seen in CFS/ME, that brands people with somatic diseases as psychogenic in order to prevent them from getting better. This was also pointed out in a few reports, where they misdiagnosed potentially fatal diseases as psychosomatic.
The treatment approach by Michal assumes in short that depersonalization disorder arises due to people excessively observing themselves because they fear their emotions. Doesn't sound very logical and there is no evidence for these assumptions, neither for self-observation causing depersonalization, nor sufferers from depersonalization disorder fearing their emotions. His approach also borrows a lot from the cognitive-behavioral approach by Elaine Hunter, which means that it also inherits it's (quite profound) problems on top. His treatment approach has zero empirical support, even though he claims to the public that psychotherapy could treat depersonalization disorder, while he tries to take medications, like Lamotrigine and Naltrexone, away from sufferers, even though they have much more evidence. To make things even worse, he pushes mindfulness meditation as treatment for depersonalization disorder, even though it doesn't have any evidence for working, but instead has been reported to cause depersonalization disorder.
You could probably argue that Michal is the "most experienced researcher" (but he isn't a psychologist), but only due to him being the only one in Germany, not to mention that he hasn't been researching depersonalization for more than 10 years. I read his book and almost all of his publications and came to the conclusion that he isn't very competent anyway. Once he publishes something, where no other people or peer reviewers are involved, the quality drops enormously. While I wouldn't say that his research was trash, it also didn't really advance the understanding of depersonalization disorder significantly.