Is the Biopsychosocial Approach a Scientific Model?

The biopsychosocial (BPS) model integrates a full range of biological, psychological, and sociocultural perspectives. A Critical Review of the Biopsychosocial Model states that BPS “provides a blueprint for research, a framework for teaching, and a design for action in the real world of health care…[However, science] operates within a system that asserts there is nothing in the universe beyond matter and energy interacting in a time/space matrix...[and] we don't have a rational, empirical way of investigating non-observables...this restrictive view excludes from scientific consideration a great deal of what we regard as quintessentially human.”

Furthermore, scientific models must have “true predictive value…[e.g., predicting] a man's psychological state from his biological data or vice versa [and it must unite ] the disparate elements of human life in such a way as to legitimize a holistic approach [in which] materialism involves more than just matter and energy. Today, we accept that information, its transfer and manipulation…is a material matter…[so] manipulation of brain-based information…is a materialist theory of mind.”

As such, BPS can be considered a scientific model. I contend it also has predictive ability, e.g.:

• It can be predicted that a certain medication may have side-effects that present as psychological/psychiatric symptoms 
• Mental disorders may predict physical disease and vice versa
• Brain patterns may predict psychiatric problems
• Mental disorders make a substantial independent contribution to the burden of disease worldwide.