The attachment and its role in medical care

Attachment styles are relational models that lead an individual to seek proximity to a safe or powerful person when threatened. As suggested by attachment theory, the quality of early interpersonal experiences shapes the self-regulate ability during the entire life span and modulate the complex relationship between social, cognitive, and emotional variables. The attachment system seems to be strongly involved in the health-related events, due to its self-regulation function. Individuals with physical illness are forced to cope with new people, contexts and experiences that are potential stressors of attachment system. Relational models, thus, seem to have a significant role in health-related psychological processes, in particular, on patients' ability to engage in a fruitful alliance with their physicians. Major chronic conditions and their complex management could broadly take advantage from a safely and trustful relationship between patient and physician. Patient medical adherence is a basic statement in health care and recent studies reported that it is closely associated with the affective relationship between patient and practitioner. Investigating the patient attachment style as a moderator of this relationship could promote clinical interventions aimed to enhance the adherence to medical care, improving health-care outcomes and patient quality of life.