In 1992 the German Medical Assembly created an independent medical specialty for psychotherapeutic medicine, with five years of specialist training. Since 2003 it has been called psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy.
Basic psychosomatic care asks doctors to include biological, psychological and social factors in diagnosis, treatment and the understanding of illness. The physician Thure von Uexküll (1908–2004) helped establish psychosomatics as a university discipline in Germany. He worked with the bio-psycho-social model.