Understanding the Biopsychosocial Model

Abstract

The biopsychosocial model has emerged from the need of a better understanding of the human being as a unit, with his biological, psychological and sociological perspectives as well as from recent research findings suggesting the difficulties of working with one of these areas without dealing with the others. Even when the need of such a model has been extensively described, the model itself and its practical applications had been poorly defined, lacking specially theoretical explanations of the interaction of biological, psychological and social factors in producing medical and psychiatric illness. The author attempts in this paper to give a theoretical explanation of the interaction of these factors by applying the concept of multicausality of illness and the concept of vulnerability of systems. The practical application of this framework is also shown in a case example.