Primarily, Dr Péter Rigó provides addiction care, but he also diagnoses and treats psychiatric disorders at Panoráma Polyclinic.

He obtained his medical degree in 1972, after which he worked at the Neurology Department of the Uzsoki Street Hospital until 1983. He passed the neurological specialist examination in 1976 and the specialist examination in psychiatry in 1986, while he also graduated as a clinical psychologist at the Eötvös Lóránd University (ELTE) in 1977. From 1989 to 1993, he completed a method-specific psychodrama training course at the École Européenne de Psychothérapie Socio et Somato-Analytique (EEPSSA) in Strasbourg under the supervision of Richard Meyer.

From 1983 until the closure of the institution in 2007, he worked at the Psychiatric Department IX of the National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology (OPNI), and from 2003 to 2007 he was the head of the Drug Outpatient Clinic in Buda. From 2007 he continued his work at the Psychiatric Department II of the Nyírő Gyula Hospital as the head of the Rehabilitation Department. In 2010, he was appointed Head of Department at the newly organized Psychiatric Department III of Nyírő Gyula Hospital. He has been the head of the Drug Outpatient Clinic of the Nyírő Gyula National Institute of Psychiatry and Addiction (OPAI) since 2013.

He is a board member of the Hungarian Psychiatric Association and the Hungarian Association on Addictions, member of the Professional College of Addiction. He participates in the training of psychiatric residents and addiction psychologists, as well as in psychotherapy training (Tündérhegy); he gives lectures and publishes articles on schizophrenia and addiction.

Main areas of expertise are

• complex treatment of addiction cases
• exploration, diagnosis, psychotherapy and/or medication of the psychological, neurobiological, and social background of psychiatric disorders

‘Looking back at my career, borrowing concepts from the Hegelian dialectic, I can say that neurology was the thesis, psychology the antithesis and psychiatry the synthesis in my activities. My archetype is the ancestor clown, whose attributes are playfulness, teaching, healing. I could consider Ferenc Mérei, Elemér Kuncz and Richard Meyer (Strasbourg) as my masters.

In psychiatry, I am mostly interested in the two extremes of the disease spectrum (‘sub-human’ and ‘super-human’), or the interchange of these two, where the loss of our humanity is at stake. Whereas in psychoses the disintegration of the SELF is primarily manifested in the realm of thoughts and spirit, in addictions it is manifested in the realm of emotions - in both cases with a lack of disease awareness. Even today, these pathologies still represent the biggest challenges for me, since in psychiatry (in which there is little addictionology) and in addictionology (where there is much psychiatry), treatment can only be effectively practiced by applying these two paradigms - the natural sciences and the humanities.

At the same time, I consider healing to be an art, because they all sprang from the same source. I am currently the head of the Addiction Care Department at Nyírő Gyula Hospital.’