How Do Biomedical Model and Biopsychological Model Influence the Medical Practices and Public Health?

Title:   How do biomedical model and biopsychological model influence the medical practices and public health?
Definition :
Biomedicine has been around since the middle of the nineteenth century as the major model used by health practitioners to detect diseases (Nettleton, 1995).This biomedical model of health have centred on how the human body functions and how diseases can be stopped, or healed through medical intervention(Taylor and field 2003). This model continues to be the bedrock in which foundation of health care system is based in the western societies, but there has being a lot of queries concerning its influence on the general pattern of health, since majority of health determinant are social and environmental. Arkinson (1988 p.180)claimed that the biomedical model, which has taken over the formal health care system in the West since the last two centuries view health along the reductionist approach. In this approach illness is said to be caused by injury or infections and there is neglect to the psychological, socio-economic and environmental influences (Taylor and field 2003).1
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The biopsychosocial approach is a way of looking at the treatment of patients. Doctors who apply this view of medicine see the patient's psychological condition and social situation as integral parts of the individual's overall health. A man named George Engel developed the biopsychosocial theory of medicine during the 1970s, and he generally saw it as an alternative to the dominant biomedical approach, which was entirely focused on physical aspects of illness. The biopsychosocial approach isn’t generally considered the norm, but many of the ideas have made an impact on medicine.2

Engel eloquently states:
"To provide a basis for understanding the determinants of disease and arriving at a rational treatments and patterns of health care, a medical model must also take into account the patient, the social context in which he lives and the complementary system devised by...