Biopsychosocial Case Formulation (BCF) Perspective

The BCF perspective considers the 4 Ps of biological, psychological, and social factors: predisposing factors, precipitating factors, perpetuating factors, and protective factors. Predisposing factors indicate vulnerabilities that could represent risk variables in the patients presenting issue, such as temperament, attachment style, family history of psychological disorder or prenatal exposure to substance abuse, immigration history, or access to health care. Precipitating factors are typically stressors that precipitate symptoms of the presenting issue, such as medical illness, family or social conflicts, identity crises, cognitive distortions or psychosocial development transitions. Perpetuating factors include conditions within the patients life systems that affect the patients issue, such as chronic illness, emotional dysregulation, unresolved conflicts, socioeconomic instability, work-related stress, or education hurdles. Protective factors can refer to an individuals good health, support systems, religious faith, skills, hobbies, likes, abilities, or other factors such as access to outpatient healthcare services that provide positive support and that serve as counteractive agents to the other three Ps (Barker, 1995).

Advantages of the BCF Perspective

The advantages of the BCF perspective are that it provides a holistic view of the patient that facilitates an accurate formulation of how the person came to be presenting with the symptoms he/she shows. It is not the same as a diagnosis, which tells what the patients illness is. Rather, the BCF perspective provides an explanation of how the patient may have acquired the illness. It is not a perspective that is narrow, rigid, or fixed in stone. Instead, it is a perspective that is constantly changing and evolving as more information and insight is gained (Krauss Whitbourne, 2019). Another advantage is that it by combining biological, social and psychological risk factors within its view, it enables the person to understand himself more completely and to see how elements from these three areas may be impacting his mental or behavioral health. Finally, a third advantage is that it provides support for complementary interventions that might otherwise go unused, such as animal-assisted therapy, music therapy, or dance therapy, all of which can be shown to help in the areas where the individual may be at risk (Muela et al., 2017).

Biological Risk Factors

Biological...

…to Eriksons model of psychosocial development (Liu et al., 2017). He is separated from friends and family who know him and whom he knows well. He experiences long periods of isolation in which he plays video games in his dorm room. These long periods of isolation likely reinforce his anti-social feelings (Loades et al., 2020). The persistence of isolation prevents him from developing self-esteem through positive contacts with others who might offer him stable, supportive relationships. There appears to be a lack of empathetic resources in his life, with no indication of having an affinity for a religious group or organization. His cognitive distortions keep him focused only on what he perceives to be his own personal defects and the stupid things he says when around others. His chronic negative thoughts and isolative reinforcing environment perpetuate his anxiety and stress. It needs to be better understood what his views of the world are and whether he is internalizing any views without realizing it. There also appears to be a lack of protective factors in his life, such as good coping…