Biopsychosocial Model

The Biopsychosocial model has been governed towards the thinking of most health care practitioners; it helps maintain the illness that explains the basis of aberrant somatic bodily processes (Taylor, 2012, p. 5). The biomedical viewpoint had begun to change with Sigmund Freud began his work on conversion hysteria between 1856 – 1939. Freud mentions that unconscious conflicts that are physical disturbances that symbolize the psychological conflicts (Taylor, 2012, p. 5). The biopsychosocial model helps maintain our biological, psychological, and our social factors that are important towards our health and illness.

This model assumes that psychological and social processes are irrelevant to the disease process. There are certain problems that are associated with the biomedical model. It can reduce illness to low-level processes. It fails to recognize social and psychological processes that are powerful over bodily estates; however, it assumes a mind-body dualism. Emphasizing illness over health than focusing on the behaviors that are promoting health. The model cannot address the many different puzzles that most practitioners face every day (Taylor, 2012, p. 5).

We do know that when we have an illness it raises our psychological issues. That means whatever we may feel like a sickness, it can hinder our mentality (ex. Bipolar, schizophrenia, ADHD, etc.). It has been shown that the onset of disease is usually due to several factors that work together. That can include social and psychological factors (high stress, low social support, and low socioeconomic status (Taylor, 2012, p. 5). We can think that the mind and the body works together does determine the health and illness that is towards the model. Which is why they said the biopsychosocial model. According to Keefe (2011), health and illness are the consequences that can play together with our biological, psychological, and our social factors.

According to the Institute of Medicine (2011b), the health goals are different among groups in our population, that helps us develop a more comprehensive biopsychosocial model.

The biopsychosocial model recognizes the importance of interacting macrolevel and microlevel processes that is in producing our health and illness. It is also called active achievement (Taylor, 2012, p. 13). Health psychologists use the model to help with their research that uncovers factors towards predicting states of health and illness as well as their clinical interventions.

The dominant model of disease today is biomedical which is molecular biology. Disease is fully accounted for by the deviations from the norm of measurable variables (biological) (Engel, 2012). This model not only requires that the disease be dealt with as an independent of social behavior but it does depend on behavioral aberrations. That means it explains the basis of disordered somatic processes (Engel, 2012, p. 379). The biomedical model is about reductionism, a philosophic view of complex phenomena that is from a single primary principle. The mind-body dualism is separates the mental from the somatic. The reductionism has physicalistic as its primary principle. From a reductionist point of view, there are conceptual tools that can be used to characterize and experimental tools to study the biological systems (4).

Interesting fact, the model was used for the study of disease by medical scientists. Not all models are scientific though. Even though a model is a belief system it helps make sense out of what seems to be disturbing (Engle, 2012, p. 380). Historical fact about the biomedical model, is that in modern Western society it had provided a basis for scientific study of disease; it was culturally specific perspective about disease which means it was our folk model.

The biomedical model is the most dominant folk model of disease now, and has become a cultural imperative (5,6). There are advantages that come with the Biopsychological model. Health becomes something that is achieved through attention to biological, psychological and social needs rather than something that is being taken for granted. There can be some clinical implications about the model that can be useful. Not only is the model useful for clinical practice but it can help in the process of diagnosing the factors in assessing a patients’ health (Taylor, 2012, p. 6). “According to the medical model, a human illness does not become a disease at one. It is a process that moves from recognition and palliation to characterization of the disease in where the etiology and the pathogenesis is known and treatment can be specific for that specific disease (Engel, 2012, p. 383).”

Is it effective in explaining how we function when we are confronted with illness and disease today? The biomedical model only explains that biological aspect without involving the psychological and social background. The psychological and social aspects are important to determine the diseases and illness that can occur today if it will be affected on the process and the outcome of the treatment. According to Hunt et al, (2008), Psychological is an important role when we have to determine the prognosis of the individual with the disease when we are giving them a medical diagnosis. It has been proven that the biopsychosocial model does fit into the World Health Organization which does emphasize the biological, psychological and sociological factors (WHO, 2007).

Came upon this article about the biopsychosocial model about the rise and fall about the model. It mentions that the model is the conceptual status quo of contemporary psychiatry. Some people see it as an antidote which means failing to provide conceptual or empirical grounds towards the biologisation of psychiatry (Ghaemi, 2009). The conceptual defense about the biopsychosocial model is about the three aspects of illness. The model has been advanced but it does not guide us on how to prioritize. The empirical defense is based on the eclectic biopsychosocial intuition about medications and psychotherapy (Ghaemi, 2009). The future may hold