Introduction

In the 1970s, psychiatrist George Engel developed the biopsychosocial model of illness. Engel used Carl Rogers’s theory of person-centered therapy as his foundational framework. Engel’s theory was a different medical model than what was trending at the time; it focused on how disease and illness affected multiple dimensions of a person. Engel believed for a person to be fully healed, the mind, body, and soul must be treated equally. His approach was that illness affects multiple parts of a person at once. He believed regardless of which bodily processes were affected, a person’s psychosocial aspect would be affected at the same time. For instance, a person diagnosed with a mental disorder experiences changes in brain chemistry (bodily process), but they will also experience difficulties interacting with other people (psychosocial). While Engel’s biopsychosocial model wasn’t very popular at the time of its development, it is what inspired the current model for patient-centered care (PCC) used in today’s health care.