Domhnall MacAuley is a CMAJ Associate Editor and a professor of primary care in Northern Ireland, UK, currently at the Society for Academic Primary Care annual conference

All the problems started with Descartes, who conceptualised the mind-body separation, described as the Cartesian model, began Rona Moss-Morris in her plenary talk.

She continued by explaining that, while we ought to focus more squarely on the bio-psycho-social, Medicine has not yet fully embraced this model. In general practice, however, we cannot explain everything using the biological model alone. There is often a mismatch between clinical signs, objective tests and the health of the patient.

Clinicians have always recognised the concept of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS), particularly in primary care ...continue reading →