PSYCHOSOCIAL ENVIRONMENTAL-FACTORS AND PSYCHOSOCIALLY MEDIATED EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTAL-FACTORS

The great difficulty with psychosocial environmental factors and psych osocially mediated effects of physical environmental factors is their great complexity. They finally produce stimuli that act on an organism . The organism is characterized by psychobiological programming determ ined by genetic factors and by earlier environmental influences. The i nteraction between these factors causes the organism to react. In some cases the reaction manifests itself as a disease, in some as a psycho somatic symptom. The task is to identify critically important system c omponents that are necessary or sufficient or contributory in causing disease or accelerating its course or triggering its symptoms. It is n ot just causation in the strict sense of the word; a broader concept i s needed to identify these components so that something can be done ab out them.