Physical and mental health are omnipresent in our current society. Many of us, if not all of us have encountered some kind of mental health disorder or physical disease, whether it be a family member, friend, stranger, or even ourselves. With the growing prevalence of mental health and even physical health, as people these days are becoming sicker and sicker, it makes one question the approaches clinicians use when addressing conditions. Two common approaches are the biomedical approach and the biopsychosocial approach. Each of these approaches are fundamental to treating illnesses and somewhat connection, but each are unique. Now which of these approaches better handles illness?
The biomedical approach is a theoretical framework based on the idea that illness can be entirely explained or understood by examining issues with a person’s biological function (Gruman et al., 2017). This approach holds a unique perspective on health, in that someone in good health would be classified by the absence of disease, as opposed to considering other factors of health and well-being. When using the approach clinicians and doctors tend to focus on lower-level biological processes. The importance of this approach is one that cannot be argued as it is responsible for medical advances that have led to many cures of life-threatening diseases. With that said, does that mean it is the best approach to use for all illnesses?
The biopsychosocial approach is a theoretical framework based of the idea that health and illness can be explained through examining issues with many aspects of a person’s life, aspects such as biological, psychological, and social (Gruman et al., 2017). This approach can be applied to both disease and mental health. It acknowledges the role that biology has to play in understanding health and illness, while considering other factors. This approach is not focused on biological processes solely, but instead examines them concurrently with psychological processes and socio-environmental influences.
Each approach has benefits and negatives, though one to be seems far more limiting and outdated than the other. That is, the biomedical approach. This approach ignores such a massive number of influences that I would argue makes it useless to an extent. What I mean by this is that even in treating disease the is psychological and social components. By only focusing on biology, you are not getting the full story. Consider two people suffering from the same disease, from a biomedical perspective their situations could be expected to be quite similar, but as we know things like social support, mental health, and overall perspective have a huge role to play when it comes to disease. Now looking at it in terms of treating mental illness, it would be neglectful to only focus on the biological aspects of the illness when such a large portion is psychological. Taking a biomedical approach could lead to clinicians not believing their patients if there is no biological evidence. I believe the biopsychosocial approach should be the main approach used when treating either disease or mental illness, as it does not ignore biology but uses it in combination with psychology and social factors to help understand and treat illness.
Reference
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE.