Evaluate biomedical model of health
Current medical models assume that all illness is secondary to disease. Revision is needed to explain illnesses without disease and improve organisation of health care. Cultural and professional models of illness influence decisions on individual patients and delivery of health care. The biomedical model of illness, which has dominated health care for the past century, cannot fully explain many forms of illness. This failure stems partly from three assumptions: all illness has a single underlying cause, disease (pathology) is always the single cause, and removal or attenuation of the disease will result in a return to health. Currently, most models of illness assume a causal relation between disease and illness—the perceived condition of poor health felt by an individual. Cultural health beliefs and models of illness help determine the perceived importance of symptoms and the subsequent use of medical resources.4 The assumption that a specific disease underlies all illness has led to medicalisation of commonly experienced anomalous sensations and often disbelief of patients who present with illness without any demonstrable disease process. Finally, most biomedical models also seem strongly linked to primitive forms of intuitive mind-body dualism. Health commissioners, budgetary systems, healthcare professionals, and the public all act as if there is some clear, inescapable separation between physical and mental health problems, ignoring evidence that a person's emotional state always affects their function and presentation of physical symptoms.w17 w18 For example, separate services exist for people with physical disability and for those with mental health problems. Healthcare systems are social organisations, and their continuing health depends on members of society using a congruent model of illness and system of values to decide