The whole you
The field of psychology and mental health support has undergone many transformations over the years. Society has gone from believing mental health had links to supernatural entities, to believing all psychological aspects of the human mind are purely biological. With varying treatments, cultures, contexts, and understandings, the biopsychosocial model is where we find ourselves today.
Put simply, this model is the lens through which your therapist sees the whole you.
For example, you walk into a session ready to hash out the argument you had with your partner and how annoyed you’ve been since. You’re expecting to unpack the words exchanged, vent a little, maybe even develop a plan on how you can resolve the argument. But, your therapist asks: “Can you tell me a bit about how conflict looked at home growing up?”
And suddenly, you have a lot less ready to say.
This is the biopsychosocial model in action - an approach to your mental health and emotional regulation that goes beyond a single moment. Why? Because we don’t appear in relationships, conversations, interactions (anything really) as blank states. We, as humans, have past experiences, patterns of thought and mechanisms for coping that we rely on. And to truly support someone through one moment, it is crucial to understand the whole person that was present in that moment.
What does this model really mean?
Biological factors - Your genetics, physical health, hormonal health, chronic conditions, anything that primarily affects your biology.
Psychological factors - How you think, feel, process, respond to the world around you. Your coping skills and mechanisms, beliefs, core values, and patterns.
Social factors - These include the environment and relationships around you. The stressors you have been/are exposed to, cultural influences, etc.
Reading this, you can easily see that looking at any one in isolation is not enough. What makes the model so powerful is that it resists the urge to simplify a whole person. A diagnosis of anxiety or depression does not define you. A diagnosis comes along with your history, current context, and internal world.
Therapy for the whole person
Traditional, biomedical-based interventions and treatments only focus on the biological factors that influence a person. For instance, you feel a scratchy throat, runny nose, mild fever and visit your local GP for a medicine prescription. While this kind of treatment can be helpful in the short-term, it can overlook underlying causes. In the same way, if we treated those with anxiety, depression, or any other disorder with just a biomedical response, we wouldn’t get the full picture.
Therapy is about untangling the various threads and webs that make us who we are. We don’t just want to treat the symptoms, we want to understand the story behind it.
Making space for the full picture of a whole person comes with compassion, curiosity, and an acceptance that the human experience is fraught with complexity. Healing doesn’t happen in isolation, it happens when all parts of you are seen, heard, and understood.
With warmth,
Ruchi.