Bio-psycho-social Perspective - Essay Example

Personality disorders are enduring, maladaptive patterns of behavior that impair social functioning. For society, the most troubling of these is the remorseless and fearless antisocial personality. Between normality and abnormality, there is not a gulf but a somewhat arbitrary line. This demarcation depends on how atypical, disturbing, maladaptive, and unjustifiable a person’s behavior is (Covinsky, 2007). For the patient who is psychologically healthy, there are numerous motivations to recover.

Patients are generally frustrated with their physical symptoms and difficulties with functioning. The desire to be healthy motivates them to strive to overcome whatever hurdles are in their path. Most patients are able to persevere through the course of treatment and recovery. However in some cases whether due to the severity of the medical condition, incorrect diagnosis, inadequate treatment, preexisting psychological vulnerabilities, complicating psychological reactions or factors in the social environment some patients fill to recover and instead enter a downward spiral.

A number of factors can contribute to this downward spiral (Gatchel, 1994).The psycho medical vortex provides a paradigm of how biopsychological disorders become intractable. Using this paradigm a variety of interventions can be identified alternately when a seemingly untreatable condition has already appeared this model can offer some suggestions as to how to identify the roadblocks to recovery and where to intervene (Gatchel, 1994).When chronic pain appears within the context of biopsychosocial disorder, comprehensive assessment requires assessing all the biological, psychological and social aspects of the condition and understanding the relationship between them.

By correctly assessing the type of biopsychosocial disorder that is being treated and understanding the history or how it developed a more effective treatment plan can be developed. Research suggests that when the biological psychological and social aspects of disabling pain are all identified and adequately addressed even complex biopsychosocial disorders can be treated successfully (Gatchel, 1994).