Advancing Physiotherapy in Mental Health: Guiding Principles for Whole-Person Care

Guiding Principles for Whole-Person Care

Abstract

The role of physiotherapy as an element of mental health care continues to expand and evolve. Mental health care is recognized by World Physiotherapy as a specialty area, but the requisite training and accreditation standards vary drastically across and even within countries. While the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of health and wellness has been around for some time, it is often deployed in a fragmented way. Physiotherapists working to improve and advance whole-person care as part of health promotion may benefit from recent models of “integrative health” which aim to approach the biopsychosocial concept from a perspective which more fully recognizes the effects of physical, cognitive/emotional, sociocultural, and environmental elements in combination. This perspective can aid in developing treatment plans which address underlying factors rather than treating physical symptoms as isolated factors. These efforts do not come without challenges and physiotherapists must be versed in a broad set of mind-body medicine, integrative medicine, and whole-person care concepts, methods, and strategies to safely and effectively implement them in clinical practice.