Defining disability, functioning, autonomy and dependency in person-centered medicine and integrated care

Functioning and disability (D&F) are two related domains of a single health construct key to understand the relationship between the individual and the disease, where social support plays an effect modifier role [2]. Therefore, D&F is regarded as a key domain in the recent models of diagnosis (i.e. person-centered medicine) [3] and intervention (i.e. Integrated Care as a complex adaptive system) [4] within the holistic paradigm.