Login / Signup

Evobiopsychosocial medicine.

Adam D HuntPaul St-John SmithRiadh Abed
Published in: Evolution, medicine, and public health (2022)
The biopsychosocial model remains the de facto framework of current healthcare, but lacks causational depth, scientific rigour, or any recognition of the importance of evolutionary theory for understanding health and disease. In this article it is updated to integrate Tinbergen's four questions with the three biopsychosocial levels. This 'evobiopsychosocial' schema provides a more complete framework for understanding causation of medical conditions. Its application is exemplified by tabulating depression, rheumatoid arthritis and COVID-19 within its format, which highlights the direct research and practical applications uniquely offered by evolutionary medicine. An evobiopsychosocial framework can serve as a useful tool to introduce evolutionary concepts into mainstream medicine by highlighting the broad and specific contributions of evolutionary analysis to researching, treating and preventing health conditions, providing a suitable next step for the mainstream model of medicine.
Keyphrases
  • healthcare
  • rheumatoid arthritis
  • genome wide
  • public health
  • mental health
  • coronavirus disease
  • sars cov
  • depressive symptoms
  • risk assessment
  • optical coherence tomography
  • idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis
  • human health