Applying a causal biopsychosocial model to guide medicine and psychiatry fifty years after Engel (opens in new tab)

Fifty years after George L. Engel proposed the biopsychosocial model to replace biomedical reductionism, its influence across medical disciplines, including psychiatry, endures but its scientific potential remains unrealized. Conceived as a foundation for research, education and clinical practice, Engel’s model anticipated the current search for integrative explanations linking biological, psychological and social processes. Yet in practice, it has often become a checklist rather than a causa...