Review of Whole person healthcare: Humanizing healthcare (vol. 1); Whole person healthcare: Psychology, spirituality, & health (vol. 2) and Whole person healthcare: The arts & health (vol. 3).

Abstract

This book review critically evaluates the Whole Person Healthcare (WPH) series. These 3 volumes advance a biopsychosocialspiritual model of the person and a holistic, integrative, multidisciplinary, multicultural, evidence-based approach to healthcare that addresses the complex interaction of these dimensions of health and illness. What is the place of WPH in the new medical continuum? Moving us away from the Cartesian dualism of scientific materialism towards a more humanistic paradigm, WPH focuses on issues of existential meaning in illness, as well as the psychological, emotional, imaginal, metaphorical, and symbolic element of being human through the expressive and creative arts. The constructs horizontal integration and practice as taught are introduced as an answer to our current crisis in clinical practice and public policy towards humanizing healthcare in the emerging model of collaborative care.