Psychosocial Factors of Diseases: A Reflection from General Medicine

Authors: Turabian JL*

DOI: 10.23880/eij-16000139

Volume 4, Issue 1

Abstract

A psychosocial factor is a measure that relates social phenomena and social contexts with pathophysiological changes.Doctors can recognize the psychosocial influence on patients’ health, but we lack the understanding and the tools to incorporate it into a useful way in the diagnostic and treatment. It is a very important issue because all health problems are biopsychosocial. There is an interaction between the different levels: the social determines and modifies the psychological, and the psychological determines and modifies the biological; and vice versa. Every disease takes, in different proportions, the three levels. The psychosocial aspects of diseases are the factors that intervene in the patient’s ways of reacting to the disease: their thoughts, emotions, behaviors and habitual bodily sensations when people face a medical diagnosis, and play a role in the expression of the symptoms and diseases. Take into account the “psychosocial” and address the psychosocial in the practice of general medicine, means listening to the patient using a criterion of “simultaneity”: listen to the psychological and social information in the patient’s complaint (including the symbolic aspects of the story; for example, those that may be related to the metaphoric use of the symptom), while working with the development of organic aspects. Doctor-patientpsychosocial context relationship is the main tool of the general practitioner in the diagnosis and treatment of all health problems in all patients. In addition, it should be remembered that when one knows how to study biological factors and their experiences in a deep and authentic way, one can also enter or at least find the psychosocial spheres of health problems. Thus, Osler’s aphorism is confirmed “it is much more important to know what kind of patient you have a disease than what sort of disease a patient has.”

Keywords: Biopsychosocial; General Practice; Medical Practice; Clinical Medicine; Social Determinants of Health; Culture; Emotion; Relationships; Society; Diseases

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