Biomedical Vs Biopsychosocial Approach Essay

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Recommended: Various definitions of health

What is the definition of being healthy? Everyone has a different perspective of the tem healthy. There are many factors that can determine what health means to you. These include “…where you live, how old you are, what your parents and friends think constitutes health, what your religious or ethnic background is,” and many more (Gurung, Regan A. R., page 3). We base most of our thoughts and opinions off of what others or even society thinks; however, our culture has most influence on how we shape our lives. There are two different approaches to separate health, biomedical and biopsychosocial.
The biomedical approach is more of a Western medicine. They define health as “…the state in which disease is absent” (Gurung, Regan A. R., page 7). They believe that illness is caused by something that went wrong in the body and can only be treated by medical professionals. The medical personal will focus mainly on containing the illness, not so much preventing or treating it (Ch. 12). The biomedical approach uses research to help contain the illness the patient may have. They need to know how to contain it. Not only do they need to …show more content…

In this approach, they believe that “…social, psychological, and biological factors interact to affect our health” (Ch. 12). Unlike the biomedical approach where they just mainly focus on containing the illness, this approach focuses on promoting one’s health. Personally, I think that the biopsychosocial approach requires research as well just not as much as the biomedical approach. This is because you need to research the person to understand what is going on in their mind or even life. This approach believes that it comes from social, psychological, or biological factors which mean that it comes from within (Ch.12). The person’s personality forms these issues that affect their health. With this being said, when trying to treat a patient, the physician would focus more on the patient and

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