Biopsychosocial Model of Addiction

A model of addiction can be viewed as a foundation from which to organize addiction into a set of fundamental intuitive principles. As such, any model allows its adherents to prioritize problems and to search for and discover solutions to these problems within the context or boundary conditions of the model. In recent years, the fields of psychology, social work, and counseling have all begun adopting the biopsychosocial perspective in research. The biopsychosocial model, unlike traditional models of addiction, is atheoretical in that it does not attempt to explain the causality of addiction. However, this model presents a holistic, systems approach and identifies the influence as well as interaction of various dimensions of the biological, social, psychological, spiritual, and cultural environment on the individual. According ...