Biomedical, Biopsychosocial, and Biocognitive: A Point-to-Point Comparison of Models in Psychiatry

Abstract

Mainstream psychiatry claims scientific status, relying on two essentially incompatible models to justify that claim. The first, the reductionist biomedical model, is based on the physicalist ontology that there is nothing in the universe beyond matter and energy interacting in the time–space matrix. The second, the biopsychosocial model, is dualist in that it allows room for causally significant psychological events to play a part in the etiology of mental disorders. More recently, the biocognitive model, a formal model of dualist interaction, offers a third path. This article sets out criteria for models and shows that neither the biomedical nor the biopsychosocial model satisfy those criteria, not least because they do not exist in a form recognizable as a scientific model. The biocognitive model is the only model available today that can provide a valid basis for psychiatry as a nonreductionist science.