Stress Affects All Aspects of Wellbeing

Stress affects all aspects of wellbeing.  Holistic medicine is one important approach to stress and wellbeing (also referred to as systems approach, integrative medicine and mind/body medicine).  Inspired by the holistic approach to health, Dr. George Engel, a psychiatrist, developed the bio-psychosocial model.  More recently, Eugene van Niekerk and Annette Prins (2001), in their book Counselling in Southern Africa: A Youth Perspective, added a fourth circle: The spiritual and existential self.  This approach is captured in figure 3.1 below.

Take a moment and consider the different aspects of self in more detail: