MEDICAL MODEL

Medical Model

Medical Model

Introduction

Medical Model is a general label for any approach to psychiatry and clinical psychology based on the assumption that abnormalities and disorders are produced by specific causes and that cure is only possible by removing the root cause. The analogy with the medical approach to somatic diseases is obvious. The term is used relatively neutrally; those who are critical of this particular approach will often call it the Disease Model, a term always used with clearly negative connotations. Some people (e.g.: Bure, Kendrick, O'Brien, MCann et al, Thompson) now state that the Medical Model has been totally outdated and has no place in modern, anti-discriminatory social care, This paper discusses this statement in view of other proponents of the model.

Discussion

The medical model refers to the conception of disease established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century's, based on an anatomo-pathological view of the individual body. (Barbour 2005, 15-20)

Meaning

The development of ideas about the origins and meaning of the terms 'health' and 'illness' has resulted in the emergence of a number of approaches designed to encapsulate the primary details of the concept and also provide parameters to its study. These approaches in many ways provide the conceptual pathway that has resulted in the discipline of health psychology. Think of these models as being formative in the historical development of health psychology as an independent level of enquiry. It is the parameters detailed in models and approaches developed to conceptualize health and illness that need to be considered, if the distinctiveness of a psychological approach to health is to be established. (Porter 2007, 24-26)

Origins

The study of health, illness and well being has a long history, dating back to the philosophical debates about the relationship between physical (bodily systems) and psychological systems found in the writings of the Greek philosophers Hippocrates (circa 460-circa 377 BC) and Galen (AD 129-circa 199). In so-called 'humoral' theory, these early writers argued that disease or illness arose when the four fluids argued to circulate the physical system (i.e. blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm) were out of balance. Importantly, however, these writers also proposed that there was a relationship between a preponderance of one of the bodily fluids and bodily temperaments or personality types. In other words, disease was associated with physical factors but these physical factors also affected the mind. The Middle Ages saw an obsession with demonology and mysticism and reinforced the view that illness was associated only with mental states. With the rise of modern medicine, however, dualism - the argument that the mind and body are independent and not causally related - became the favoured position, and as such physicians treated bodily ailments without the need to recognize the role of the mind in illness aetiology. (Davis 2000, 45-50)

Criticism of the Medical Knowledge

The concept of the medical model is frequently used by sociologists and others as a shorthand way of describing the dominant approach to disease in Western ...