Significance of the Biopsychopolitical Model of Mental Health and Illnesses: Exploring Trends, Predictors and Statistical Challenges

The current concerns regarding the ever-increasing global burden of non-communicable diseases where mental disorders and related somatic diseases make a significant contribution triggered my interest in the review of social determinants of mental health. Sufficient evidence led to the link of political systems to mental ill-health of citizens and taking into account the drawbacks of the biopsychosocial model based interventions led me to the formulation of the biopsychopolitical model that may guide the curative and preventive interventions for mental and related somatic diseases that I collectively call Social Distress Coping Disorders (SDCDs). The present paper aimed to find the predictor that may guide epidemiological studies. While ironically the Human Development Index (HDI) and Social Development Index (SDI) positively correlate with the global prevalence of disorders like depression and anxiety; an attempt was made to find a predictor that may negatively correlate with the prevalence of SDCDs on a global scale with no success due to reasons elucidated. On a local scale, the income inequality measures weakly negatively correlated with hypertension at 95% CI (R= -0.307, β = -0.449, p= 0.030) while no correlation was found for depression (R= -0.106, β = -0.014, p= 0.47) in 50 African countries with available data, and possible reasons for this were mentioned. The link between political systems and social determinants of mental health is certain, while waiting for a suitable model and predictor due to biased data as shown, the validity of the biopsychopolitical model is assured.