About Psychosocial Issues Relating to Chronic Disease

What are psychosocial issues relating to chronic disease?

Medical-psychiatric comorbidity – a term coined to describe the interplay between medical disease and psychological functioning is a complex but important subject. Chronic illness clearly presents a challenge to psychosocial adjustment on both the individual and family level. At the same time, psychosocial adjustment plays a reciprocal role in onset, course, treatment effectiveness, and management of a chronic illness, which ultimately bear upon the patient’s quality of life.

Recognizing such intertwined medical-psychiatric comorbidity, National Jewish Health rejects the philosophy of consulting a psychosocial professional only in a crisis or only when the illness has not improved through medical intervention. Simultaneous medical and psychosocial interventions help dispel the patient’s fear that others think “it’s all in my head.” The treatment philosophy at National Jewish Health recognizes that “heads” are connected and vitally important to “bodies,” and helps educate patients about how stress and physical health are related.

Psychosocial and Behavioral Health Services

The current primary clinical mission of the Division of Psychosocial Medicine at National Jewish Health is to provide state-of-the-art consultative and liaison support to our clinical programs seeing patients with respiratory, immunologic, allergic, infectious, and occupational/environmental diseases.

Psychosocial Medicine

Pediatric Behavioral Health Services