top of page
Search

Is healthcare incomplete if it heals the body but neglects emotional well-being?

  • Richelle Daniel
  • Aug 14
  • 5 min read

For many centuries, healthcare has been a means of diagnosing diseases, repairing damage, and extending human life through treatments meant to aid the physical body. However, as the world’s understanding of health has expanded, a debate has emerged: can healthcare truly be considered complete if it heals the physical body while ignoring emotional well-being? Some argue that healthcare’s primary responsibility should remain as the treatment of physical illnesses because as far as history has been recorded, medicine has revolved upon observable biological processes. Others argue that emotional well-being is a critical factor of overall wellness, meaning that practitioners that ignore mental health can never provide full, proper care to the patient. 


Critics of the World Health Organization’s definition of health, which describes it as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being,” argue that this standard is unrealistic because no one can maintain perfect well-being at all times. However, the WHO’s definition was not made to demand complete perfection in patients’ health, and rather it is to emphasize that health exists on different domains and thus is multidimensional. The WHO also reinforces that mental health is an integral part of health; therefore, there is no health without mental health. The connection between the mind and body—proven with evidence showing how psychological states influence ‘visible’ healthiness and the biopsychosocial model of healthcare demonstrate that emotional well-being is not separate from medicine, and instead it is a fundamental part of it that practitioners can not ignore. 


The World Health Organization’s definition of health emphasizes that health involves more than simply the absence of disease or physical strain. Physical health, mental health, and social health all interact with each other to determine a person’s quality of life. A person may be free from a visible disease but still experience poor health due to severe stress, depression, or isolation. At the same time, disagreements with the WHO definition of “complete…well-being” are understandable because health exists on a spectrum rather than as a strict ‘fully healthy or fully unhealthy’. People can experience temporary struggles while still being considered healthy. However, as one analysis of the WHO definition explains, complete well-being might be understood as a state that is exhaustive of all constitutive features of well-being. It is important to realize that including emotional well-being as a component of health does not require people to ignore biology and want perfection, and instead it acknowledges that physical and psychological factors always influence and feed off each other. 


One framework that supports this idea is the biopsychosocial model that was introduced by psychiatrist Dr. George Engel in 1977. The biopsychosocial model is defined by its interdisciplinarity, which requires healthcare to integrate different domains of an individual’s health rather than treating each factor in isolation. Engel argued that proper healthcare should consider psychological and social factors that affect patients and not just solely physical factors. The traditional biomedical model views illness as just the result of physical abnormalities, such as infections, injuries, and genetic abnormalities. While this model has shown to be successful in treating many diseases, Engel believed it was incomplete because it overlooked how a person’s thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and environment could influence health and quality of life. For example, two patients with the same medical condition may recover differently depending on their social support and mental state. By considering these factors, healthcare providers can create treatments that address the entire patient rather than only the disease. 


Despite this evidence, some argue that healthcare should continue to prioritize physical treatment because medical professionals have traditionally been responsible for treating biological diseases, while emotional health has been handled by families, friends, and religious communities. This perspective formed because for centuries, medicine has only focused on conditions that could be directly observed, such as infections and injuries, due to a lack of knowledge. Additionally, throughout history, individuals who experienced mental illness were often misunderstood and shunned from society, which further contributed to stigma surrounding mental disorders. 


However, modern medicine has moved far beyond these outdated assumptions. The separation between physical and mental health is increasingly recognized as inaccurate because psychological conditions are proven to influence biological processes, and physical illnesses are shown to affect emotional well-being. Furthermore, even when a medication or procedure is appropriate, the patient’s quality of living after the procedure depends on far more than the physical treatment itself. A healthy individual should have the ability to cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and be able to make a contribution to his or her community—and an individual who is either physically, mentally, or socially unwell may struggle with one or more of these aspects. Therefore, addressing mental health is not a ‘distraction’ from physical medicine as many describe it, and instead it improves the effectiveness of overall healthcare and quality of living. 


The relationship between mental and physical health is also supported by evidence through biological processes. Emotional distress has shown to increase susceptibility to physical illness in numerous examples. When someone experiences stress, their body releases increased levels of the hormone cortisol. Short-term cortisol increases can be useful because they prepare the body to properly respond to the stress.


However, consistently elevated cortisol levels can negatively affect immune function, increase susceptibility to viral infection, increase inflammation, disrupt sleep, and lead to a higher risk of chronic health problems such as cardiovascular disease. This creates a positive feedback loop, where emotional distress worsens physical health, which then increases emotional distress further. For example, a patient experiencing depression may have difficulty maintaining healthy habits, attending medical appointments, or consistently taking prescribed medications. As a result, neglecting the patient’s emotional well-being reduces the effectiveness of physical treatments while also increasing the patient’s depressive symptoms due to a sense of personal failure.


A complete healthcare system must recognize that patients are not just flesh and bones, but instead they are complex individuals whose physical and mental states are deeply interconnected. Fighting the stigma around mental health is necessary because ignoring psychological suffering can prevent people from receiving the full care that they need. Modern healthcare systems are already moving toward a more holistic approach by integrating different kinds of healthcare specialists, such as psychologists and physicians into medical fields. One example of this is psycho-oncology, which emerged to address the psychological needs of cancer patients throughout diagnosis and treatment. 


However, many hospitals of medical fields persist in prioritizing physical health over psychological health—highlighting the dire need for more widespread integration of mental health into healthcare rather than treating it as a separate concern. Healthcare is not incomplete because it treats physical illness; rather, it becomes incomplete when it only treats one’s physical illness while ignoring emotional factors that influence someone's ability to properly recover and live a healthy life.




Bibliography

 

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page