Why conventional medicine has been slow to embrace mind-body treatment

For much of modern medicine, the body has been treated as the primary site of disease and the mind as a separate domain.

If you had pain, a clinician looked for damaged tissue. If you had high blood pressure, the focus was on vascular and metabolic mechanisms. If you experienced anxiety or emotional distress, that was more likely to be addressed separately.

This model has produced extraordinary advances in diagnosis and treatment. Yet it has also created a problem as many conditions cannot be fully understood by separating biological processes from psychological and social influences.