Research prospects in BioPsychoSocial medicine: new year reflections on the "Cross-Boarder Dialogue" paradigm.

Abstract

Looking back on an excellent year for the Journal of BioPsychoSocial Medicine, with numerous exciting papers addressing topics right at core of the Journal’s interest and often tackling issues at the forefront of international research trends, we first and foremost like to congratulate the Japanese Society of Psychosomatic Medicine on the performance of its official Journal in 2014! Given the very special honor to contribute to the New Year’s Issue 2015 we would like to take the opportunity to reflect on a key paradigm of the Journal of BioPsychoSocial Medicine and the represented field of Psychosomatic Medicine: The imperative for cross-boarder dialogue and collaboration. One central aspect surely being the dialogue across the boarders of the biomedical and the psycho-social schools of thought, underpinned by the well supported hypothesis that the complex enigma of human existence can not be fully understood within the narrow boundaries of one or the other scientific community. In the following we will discuss several selected perspectives on the dialogue and collaboration paradigm. First, we would like to discuss examples of recently published research related to the “stress-pandemic”. We then turn to the health-system dimension in underlining the importance of the trans-sectoral dialogue in psychosomatic medicine and BioPsychoSocial research, presenting examples of current studies on the treatment of anorexia nervosa (one of our own main clinical and research interests). Furthermore we would like to extend a very warm invitation to join us on the upcoming German Congress of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy in March 2015 in Berlin; where we look forward to discuss the topic: ‘Psycho-Somatic, Dialogue Instead of Dualism’ with more then 1000 participants from all over the globe. We conclude in paying tribute to the Japanese-German friendship in the field of psychosomatic medicine, as a distinct example of a fruitful dialogue across the boarders of nations, cultures and continents.