The emergence of the biopsychosocial approach. A model for third world health care systems

Abstract

The author advances a proposal for an approach to a truly human medicine that deals with biological problems in a sociological rather than an individual formulation. This is a logical step in the evolution of modern medicine in the Third World which unlike the industrialized world is still challenged by unmet basic needs. The biopsychosocial approach integrates all levels of modern medicine as an extension of the social context in which the individual lives works loves and becomes ill in such a way as to cut across race and ethnicity in the appreciation of human invariants. Most important in this process is that the basic philosophy be shared and that we become freed of traditional forms of conceptualizing knowledge and established disciplines. In the process new disciplines will emerge and old ones will lose their appeal but the result will answer the specific human needs of developing Third World health care systems.