A Systemic Approach to Health and Disease: The Interaction of Individuals, Medicines, Cultures and Environments

Systemic approaches seek to comprehend a given phenomenon as the result of the dynamic and non-linear interaction between different levels of a system, without reducing one to the other. The relationship between the different components thus remains central, rather than the specific components themselves. Therefore, systemic approaches to treatment and disease don’t presume to reduce either to exclusively physicochemical factors. In this chapter we will begin by discussing some key elements of systemic approaches and then make a critical evaluation on the basic assumptions of the hitherto dominant approach in the medical sciences. We will then show how it is possible to consider health and disease as systemic processes by analyzing several cases situated at different levels of complexity. Finally, we will attempt to identify some trends in the current organization of care services that seem to be going in, what appears to us, a hopeful direction.