Overview
- Offers a timely reworking and update of the biopsychosocial model
- Confronts the current rapid changes to psychological science, neuroscience, healthcare, and philosophy
- Addresses key issues such as the model’s scientific basis, clinical utility, and philosophical coherence
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About this book
This open access book is a systematic update of the philosophical and scientific foundations of the biopsychosocial model of health, disease and healthcare. First proposed by George Engel 40 years ago, the Biopsychosocial Model is much cited in healthcare settings worldwide, but has been increasingly criticised for being vague, lacking in content, and in need of reworking in the light of recent developments. The book confronts the rapid changes to psychological science, neuroscience, healthcare, and philosophy that have occurred since the model was first proposed and addresses key issues such as the model’s scientific basis, clinical utility, and philosophical coherence.
The authors conceptualise biology and the psychosocial as in the same ontological space, interlinked by systems of communication-based regulatory control which constitute a new kind of causation. These are distinguished from physical and chemical laws, most clearly because they can break down, thus providing the basis for difference between health and disease. This work offers an urgent update to the model’s scientific and philosophical foundations, providing a new and coherent account of causal interactions between the biological, the psychological and social.
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Keywords
Table of contents (4 chapters)
Authors and Affiliations
About the authors
Derek Bolton is Professor of Philosophy and Psychopathology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, UK. He was awarded a double first in Moral Sciences and a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. His subsequent professional career was in clinical psychology and he has published extensively in philosophy of psychiatry as well as basic and clinical health science.
Grant Gillett is Professor of Bioethics at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His professional career was in Neurosurgery, punctuated by a D. Phil. at Oxford University in philosophy of mind and meta-ethics. He has published extensively in neuroethics, philosophy of mind and language, philosophy of medicine (particularly psychiatry), and the philosophy of medical and social sciences.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Biopsychosocial Model of Health and Disease
Book Subtitle: New Philosophical and Scientific Developments
Authors: Derek Bolton, Grant Gillett
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11899-0
Publisher: Palgrave Pivot Cham
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and Psychology, Behavioral Science and Psychology (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-11898-3Published: 08 April 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-11899-0Published: 28 March 2019
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 149
Topics: Clinical Psychology, Psychological Methods/Evaluation, Critical Psychology, Philosophy of Medicine, History of Psychology