What Do We Mean by a Biopsychosocial Model?
Workers in the field of health psychology are usually careful to make a distinction between disease and illness, the former being a biological event characterized by pathology in the structure and function of body organs and systems, and the latter the subjective experience of negative changes in well-being. This distinction provides the basis for much research that is concerned with the nature of symptom reporting and the response to disease onset and its treatment. It would appear to be central to the understanding of unexplained symptom syndromes because, implicitly or explicitly, when we adopt a biopsychosocial position we are concerned primarily with the understanding of illness rather than the explanation of disease. In this context, disease (or biological factors) represents just one possible contributor among many other (largely psychosocial) factors that help to determine illness or negative changes in well-being (Figure 1).
