Abstract
The biopsychosocial paradigm is a model of care that has been proposed in order to improve the effectiveness of health care by promoting collaboration between different professions and disciplines. However, its application still faces several issues. A quantitative-qualitative survey was conducted on a sample of general practitioners (GPs) from Milan, Italy, to investigate their attitudes and beliefs regarding the role of the psychologist, the approach adopted to manage psychological diseases, and their experiences of collaboration with psychologists. The results show a partial view of the psychologist’s profession that limits the potential of integration between medicine and psychology in primary care. GPs recognized that many patients (66%) would often benefit from psychological intervention, but only in a few cases (9%) were these patients regularly referred to a psychologist. Furthermore, the referral represents an almost exclusive form of collaboration present in the opinions of GPs. Only 8% of GPs would consider the joint and integrated work of the psychologist and doctor useful within the primary health care setting. This vision of the role of psychologists among GPs represents a constraint in implementing a comprehensive primary health care approach, as advocated by the World Health Organization.
Highlights
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The biopsychosocial model initially proposed by Engel [1,2], which validates the definition of health previously defined by the World Health Organization [3,4], highlights the importance of the interaction among biological, psychological, and social factors on the basis of wellbeing and illness
An ad hoc survey composed of 32 items (Appendix A) divided into five main areas (Table 1) was developed; the questions were formulated in order to explore general practitioners (GPs)’ attitudes and beliefs about psychological intervention and the medicine-psychology relationship in primary care
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Its exclusive use can become a “scientific counter-productive” framework according to those who claim that in any discipline, some innovation (positive at the origin), if exacerbated, could produce opposite and negative effects [5] This is true in the field of primary health care, where the individuals’ wellbeing is intrinsically connected to cultural, social, and family processes, and not just to biological and bodily functions. GPs have a unique and privileged position among the other health care professionals because they know the biomedical, social, familiar, and personal history of the patient For this reason, they should be allowed to read the patients’ requests and problems within a psycho-socio-relational framework [17,18,19,20], but the predominance of the biomedical model and the consequent technicalization and hyperspecialization of medicine prevents the adoption of a complex and holistic approach to treatment in many cases. Even with their differences and some critical elements, the psychologist collaborates with the family doctor or other specialists in the field of primary care [28]
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