Biopsychosocial Framework Essay

Through Psychology 101, I have come to gain a clear understanding of the Biopsychosocial Framework. I have learned that the biopsychosocial framework is made up of three levels of analysis, and these three levels are biological, psychological, and social-cultural influences. Psychologists rely on the biopsychosocial framework because it gives them a more complete and clear understanding when they are studying a person’s behavior or mental processes. The Biopsychosocial framework results from the Nature-vs-Nurture debate. The Nature-vs-Nurture debate was a debate between scientists on how much of an effect our genes or our environment has on our behavior. Scientists concluded that both our environment and our genes affect our behavior. Therefore, …show more content…
By considering, psychological influences, psychologists are able to consider a person’s history and the role it may play in mental illnesses. The last level of the biopsychosocial approach is social-cultural influences. Social-cultural influences contain roles and expectations as well as how normality and disorder are defined in other cultures. For example, the expectations put on a person in one culture may be extremely high and thus play a role in the diagnosis of a mental illness. When taking into consideration social-cultural influences, it is important to note the differences involving mental illnesses throughout the globe. For example, when a person is diagnosed with a certain mental illness, they improve more in a third-world country than a person who has the same mental illness but lives in the United States. This may be explained by the strong support that is found in the villages of these third-world countries. Through the use of the biopsychosocial approach, psychologists are able to incorporate many different influences that will help them to more accurately and clearly decide if a person has a mental illness and also how to treat the mental