Biopsychosocial vs. Biomedical Model

Biopsychosocial model.

Authors:

Purdy, Elizabeth Rholetter, PhD

Source:

Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2019. 2p.

Document Type:

Article

Subject Terms:

Biopsychosocial model

Abstract:

The biopsychosocial model (BSP) is a method of looking at all biological, psychological, and social influences on human health and the body’s ability to respond to and recover from various diseases. The model examines a continuum of influences that begins with the biosphere and encompass society, culture, community, family, and the individual and analyzes their impacts on all the systems that make up the human body. The biopsychosocial model has become part of the medical mainstream; clinicians are taught to examine biological, psychological, and social factors when diagnosing and treating all kinds of health problems and use BSP to treat a wide range of conditions that include but are not limited to cancer, HIV-AIDS, depression, personality disorders, pediatric illnesses and traumas, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic fatigue syndrome, dementia, chronic pelvic pain, and lower back pain. The model has also been used effectively by emergency room physicians and acupuncturists.

Full Text Word Count:

1300

Accession Number:

89677525

Database:

Research Starters

 

 

Biopsychosocial model

Full Text

The biopsychosocial model (BSP) is a method of looking at all biological, psychological, and social influences on human health and the body’s ability to respond to and recover from various diseases. The model examines a continuum of influences that begins with the biosphere and encompass society, culture, community, family, and the individual and analyzes their impacts on all the systems that make up the human body. The biopsychosocial model has become part of the medical mainstream; clinicians are taught to examine biological, psychological, and social factors when diagnosing and treating all kinds of health problems and use BSP to treat a wide range of conditions that include but are not limited to cancer, HIV-AIDS, depression, personality disorders, pediatric illnesses and traumas, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic fatigue syndrome, dementia, chronic pelvic pain, and lower back pain. The model has also been used effectively by emergency room physicians and acupuncturists.

Holistic health: body, mind, heart, soul. By http://www.yogaartandscience.com/about/about.html Derivative work 1: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mirzolot2 Derivative work 2: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Creativekiwi [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)],

Background

In the twentieth century, the foundation for the biopsychosocial model evolved from conflicts between biological reductionism, which reduced biological explanations to their simplest forms, and traditional psychoanalytic theories, based on the teachings of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the Austrian neurologist. The first American to attempt a more comprehensive understanding of the ways in which the body and the environment influenced one another was Adolf Meyer (1866–1950) of Johns Hopkins University. Roy Grinker (1900–93) of the University of Chicago built on Meyer’s work and is credited with coining the term "biopsychosocial."

The two individuals most closely associated with the biopsychosocial model are the psychiatrists George Engel (1913–99) and John Romano (1909–94) of the University of Rochester in New York. After suffering the loss of his twin brother, Engel became interested in the high correlation between the loss of a loved one and the onset of various diseases. In 1977, that discovery led Engel to develop the biopsychosocial model that is still used in the twenty-first century. In addition to contributing to the understanding of the biopsychosocial model, Romano, who had founded the university’s Department of Psychiatry in 1946, was a major influence on the overall development of psychiatry in the United States.

Implementations of the biopsychosocial model have focused on patient-centered health care, which has become the norm in both the United States and Canada, and it has been endorsed by the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Osteopathic Association.

Overview

Patient interviews have become one of the most important tools used by physicians as a means of understanding biological, psychological, and social impacts on a patient’s health. Each year physicians conduct between 120,000 and 160,000 patient interviews. A group of physicians at the Centre for Studies in Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario built on the biopsychosocial model to develop a patient-centered model that is used throughout North America. In a 2000 study conducted at the Centre by Moira Stewart and colleagues, the researchers discovered that Engel’s emphasis on patient interviews held up over time because it continued to be integral to successful outcomes in medical treatment. They found that patient-centered communication was effective in speeding up recovery time, improving mental health, and reducing the need for follow-up medical treatment and referrals to specialists.

In the early twenty-first century, the biopsychosocial model has been widely used in treating chronic illnesses such as cancer and HIV-AIDS. In a 2010 study, Scott M. Debb and David L. Blitz note that the biopsychosocial model is significantly more effective than traditional methods in treating such diseases because it takes biological predispositions, psychological stressors, socioeconomic factors, physiological characteristics, and patient-generated appraisals of all these factors into account. In their examination of chronically ill patients in Atlanta, Chicago, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, Debb and Blitz found that African Americans recovered more slowly from cancer and HIV/AIDS than whites and received poorer health diagnoses. This was assumed to be partly due to greater access to the health-care system by whites. However, African Americans expressed more optimism about their health, a fact that researchers posited was linked to higher levels of ethnic identity.

Within the field of physiotherapy, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has established guidelines for using the biopsychosocial model in conjunction with traditional methods of therapy. The new paradigm calls for increased attention to the overall environment of patients. However, many physiotherapists still lack sufficient training in implementing the model.

The biopsychosocial model also has significant potential for dealing with issues presented by diverse ethnicities that make up the client base of community counselors throughout the world. In 2009, British clinical psychologist Waseem Alladin offered a nine-dimensional model for community counseling based on the biopsychosocial model that recognizes respect for human dignity as articulated in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. For example, understanding social and religious perceptions associated with particular ethnicities is integral to treating individual patients successfully.

Most medical schools teach both the biomedical and biopsychosocial models. When training physicians, the biopsychosocial model emphasizes the need to acknowledge the role that relationships play in an individual’s health; take a patient’s own impressions of their health problems into account; mandate detailed life histories from patients; attempt to identify the most relevant biological, psychological, and social factors in particular cases; and offer treatment based on a multidimensional perspective. For instance, understanding how a person perceives health problems and identifying levels of support available to him or her may determine how well he or she recovers from an illness. Some psychiatrists and psychologists have criticized the biopsychosocial model for various reasons, one of which is that one of the biological, psychological, or social aspects of diagnosis may be underrepresented depending on patients' subjective experiences or doctors' own biases. Nonetheless, it continues to be used across the medical spectrum.

Bibliography

Alladin, Waseem. “An Ethno Biopsychosocial Human Rights Model for Educating Community Counsellors Globally.” Counselling Psychology Quarterly 22.1 (2009): 17–24. Print.

Benning, Tony B. "Limitations of the Biopsychosocial Model in Psychiatry." Advances in Medical Education & Practice 6 (2015): 347–52. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 June 2015.

“The Biopsychosocial Approach.” University of Rochester Medical Center. U of Rochester Medical Center, n.d. PDF file.

Cohen, Jules, and Stephanie Brown Clark. John Romano and George Engel: Their Lives and Work. Rochester: Mellora P of Rochester U, 2010. Print.

Debb, Scott M., and David L. Blitz. “Relating Ethnic Differences and Quality of Life Assessment to Individual Psychology through the Biopsychosocial Model.” Journal of Individual Psychology 66.3 (2010): 270–89. Print.

Ebert, Michael H., and Kerns, Robert D., eds. Behavioral and Psychopharmacologic Pain Management. New York: Cambridge UP, 2011. Print.

Engel, George. “The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for Medicine.” Science 196 (1977): 129–36. Print.

Frankel, Richard M., Timothy E. Quill, and Susan H. McDaniel. The Biopsychosocial Approach: Past, Present, Future. Rochester: U of Rochester P, 2003. Print.

Ghaemi, Seyyed Nassir. “Paradigms of Psychiatry: Eclecticism and Its Discontents.” Current Opinion in Psychiatry 19.6 (2006): 619–24. Print.

Kiesler, Donald J. Beyond the Disease Model of Mental Disorders. Westport: Praeger, 1999. Print.

Miller, Suzanne M., ed. Individuals, Families, and the New Era of Genetics: Biopsychosocial Perspectives. New York: Norton, 2006. Print.

Silk, Kenneth R. Biology of Personality Disorders. Washington: APA, 1998. Print.

Stewart, Moira, et al. “The Impact of Patient-Centered Care on Outcomes.” Journal of Family Practice 49.9 (2000). Web. 25 July 2013.