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The biopsychosocial model (abbreviated “BPS”) is a general model or approach stating that biological, psychological (which entails thoughts, emotions, and behaviors), and social (socio-economical, socio-environmental, and cultural) factors, all play a significant role in human functioning in the context of disease or illness. Indeed, health is best understood in terms of a combination of biological, psychological, and social factors rather than purely in biological terms.[1] This is in contrast to thebiomedical model of medicine that suggests every disease process can be explained in terms of an underlying deviation from normal function such as a virus, gene or developmental abnormality, or injury. The concept is used in fields such asmedicine, nursing, health psychology, occupational therapy and sociology, and particularly in more specialist fields such as psychiatry, health psychology, family therapy, chiropractic, clinical social work, and clinical psychology. The biopsychosocial paradigm is also a technical term for the popular concept of the “mind–body connection”, which addresses more philosophical arguments between the biopsychosocial and biomedical models, rather than their empirical exploration and clinical application.

The model was theorized by psychiatrist George L. Engel at the University of Rochester, and putatively discussed in a 1977 article in Science, where he posited “the need for a new medical model.” He discusses his model in detail in his paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry where he discusses the fate of a hypothetical patient, a 55 year old man who has a second heart attack six months after his first. Engel elegantly indicates that the patient’s personality helps to interpret his chest pain, that he is in some degree of denial and that it is only the intervention of his employer that gives him permission to seek help. Whereas reductionistically his heart attack can be understood as a clot in a coronary artery, the wider personal perspective helps to understand that different outcomes may be possible depending on how the person responds to his condition. Subsequently, the patient in the emergency room develops a cardiac arrest as a result of an incompetent arterial puncture. Once again systems theory can analyse this event in wider terms than just a cardiac arrhythmia. It sees the event as due to inadequate training and supervision of junior staff in an emergency room. Thus while there may be “no single definitive, irreducible model has been published,” Engel’s elegant exposition of his model in this paper gives plenty of scope for this broader understanding of clinical practice.

The novelty, acceptance, and prevalence of the biopsychosocial model varies across cultures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopsychosocial_model