As a counsellor, people often ask me what causes the mental health issues that they or their loved ones are struggling with. Whether we’re looking at a disorder or someone’s ability to regulate their own emotions, the biopsychosocial model can help conceptualise the contributing factors. This model looks at three factors – biological, psychological, and social factors.
Biological
Biological factors include genetics. For example, if multiple people in your family have issues managing anxiety (not necessarily an anxiety disorder), we might say that you have a genetic predisposition. Biological factors also include physical conditions like injury or physical limitations. Neurochemistry, or the chemicals in your brain, also play a part. Even the food you eat (nutrition) can be a biological factor that contributes to mental health.
Psychological
Psychological factors have to do with your coping skills, personality, self-esteem, social skills, and the beliefs you may hold about you and the world around you. Psychological factors are often the factors targeted in individual therapy.
Social
Social factors are more external factors that include social support (i.e. friends and family), your school or work environment, the relationships around you, your upbringing, and your education. Family appears both in biological and social factors, but in different contexts. Family as a biological factor refer to your genetics, whereas family in social factors refer to the way your family members interacted with you or what you may have observed about them growing up.
Interacting Factors and Perpetuating Cycles
These factors don’t sit in silos – they interact with each other. They can work in a good way – such as, if you have a very high genetic predisposition to addiction, you may not develop addiction because you have very healthy coping skills and a very supportive social network – or they can work in a bad way, such as in Alice’s situation:
Alice’s parents were never around when she was younger because they were busy working; her parents hired live-in maids to take care of Alice, but her parents changed maids every 2 years [upbringing – social factor]. Through all this, Alice learned that people cannot be trusted because they are only going to hurt her [belief – psychological factor]. As a result, Alice did not want to get close to anyone when she started schooling and did not have friends [relationships – social factor]. Alice was a loner and her schoolmates bullied her for it [school environment – social factor]. This bullying resulted in Alice feeling lousy about herself [self-esteem – psychological factor]. Alice turned to comfort eating to feel better [nutrition – biological factor], and this resulted in weight gain that made her feel even worse about herself [self-esteem – psychological factor]. Feeling bad about herself, Alice once again turns to comfort eating [nutrition – biological factor].
In Alice’s case, we can see how the biological, psychological, and social factors interact with each other. Alice is also trapped in a cycle where she overeats because she feels bad about herself, but this lead to weight gain, and that in turn makes her feel bad about herself. This sort of cycle is called a perpetuating cycle.
Take a look at the issues that you’re currently facing in life – are you able to identify any perpetuating cycles? What do you think you can do to change them?