What is the Biopsychosocial model?
The biopsychosocial model depicts a health care concept that has evolved in close association with current pain theory. It has sought coexistence with the dominant biomedical model of health care, which describes ‘disease’ as a failure of or within the soma, resulting from infection, injury or inheritance [1]. The biomedical model has its roots in the Cartesian division between mind and body [2]. In 1977, Engel described a crisis that modern medicine and psychiatry were facing. Disease, from a biomedical perspective was described in somatic parameters alone, there was little or no room for psychological, social and behavioural dimensions of illness within this model. This made adherence to this framework very difficult. There were somatic and mental disorders that simply did not fit the biomedical model, and hence it was no longer sufficient for the scientific and social responsibilities of either medicine or psychiatry [2,3]. Engel set out to develop a new framework that would account
