Integrating the bio into the biopsychosocial: Understanding and treating biological phenomena in psychiatric-mental health nursing

Advances in neuroscientific understandings of the interrelationships between brain, behavior, emotion, and cognition offer new opportunities for psychiatricmental health nursing. Yet, even though the discipline conceptually embraces a biopsychosocial perspective as part of its holistic mandate, the factual integration of biological sciences into practice, research, and education is limited. Integrating the biological perspective into a holistic paradigm and progressing toward a discipline in which the biological, psychological, and social interact coherently and interdependently requires a dual focus on understanding and treating patients and their social and physical environments. We describe how in the past the discipline has strived toward understanding and treating patients from predominantly psychological and social perspectives. We also show how progress in the biology of mental health and illness provides new avenues for understanding and treating patients' responses to actual and potential health problems. This in turn will contribute to the emergence of a truly holistic discipline of psychiatric-mental health nursing.