Emotional health: challenging biomedicine or increasing health surveillance?

In general practice in the UK, the term emotional health is increasingly being used to address an ever-increasing range of consultations which involve distressing symptoms which combine mental, physical and social aspects of health and wellbeing. Practitioners often despair of being able to treat these complex conditions with traditional biomedicine, as they are often manifested through medically unexplained symptoms, hence the turn to more holistic or integrated models of health and illness, which are now permeating many areas of medical education and health care practice. Instead of the 'quickfix' response of psychopharmacological treatment, psychotherapeutic therapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy or social interventions, such as exercise programmes may be considered for alleviating anxiety and depression. This article considers whether the focus on emotional health offers a potential and enlightened way forward in addressing the mind/body/society interface in contemporary health care and health promotion.