Alternatives To The Medical Model
"Alternatives to the Medical Model" refers to approaches in psychology that challenge the traditional view of mental health as solely a medical issue. These alternatives emphasize social, cultural, and environmental factors in understanding and addressing mental health concerns. They advocate for a more holistic and inclusive approach that takes into account the individual's unique experiences and context.
6 Key excerpts on "Alternatives To The Medical Model"
eBook - ePubPsychology and Social Work
Applied Perspectives
- Gabriela Misca, Peter Unwin(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...For example, the review found that black people were less likely to be offered talking therapies, were more dependent on long-term medication, and were more likely to be detained under compulsory orders. Social work has a role in challenging such injustice, a particularly difficult role given the predominance of the medical profession in the field of mental health. Historically, in the UK, the treatment of those suffering from a mental illness took place within large institutions, but a series of scandals regarding patient care, together with criticisms of institutional mistreatment by authors such as Goffman (1961) and Townsend (1962), led to moves towards smaller units and contemporary care in the community. Goffman viewed institutions as essentially self-serving organizations wherein the needs of the establishment and the key staff took precedence over the needs of patients. The ‘medical model’ (Laing, 1971) of treating mentally ill people in ways that sought to ‘cure’ them was increasingly challenged, and the 1960s saw a continued move away from large hospitals and a new generation of psychiatry which questioned traditional treatments. The medical model basically views mental illness in terms of diagnostic categories that are usually best treated by expert diagnosis and clinical intervention, often involving pharmacological treatments. Psychological and social factors are not given prominence under this model, which measures success in terms of individuals’ ability to accord with social norms and values as reflected in the categorizations of the main diagnostic framework, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)...
eBook - ePubThe Heroic Client
A Revolutionary Way to Improve Effectiveness Through Client-Directed, Outcome-Informed Therapy
- Barry L. Duncan, Scott D. Miller, Jacqueline A. Sparks(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Jossey-Bass(Publisher)
...CHAPTER TWO The Myth of the Medical Model Dethroning Diagnosis and Best Practice The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. —Thomas Henry Huxley, Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science T he medical model, emphasizing diagnostic classification and evidence-based practice, has been transplanted wholesale into the field of human problems. Psychotherapy is almost exclusively described, researched, taught, practiced, and regulated in terms of the medical model’s assumptions and practices. But how did we get here? Psychologist George Albee (2000) suggests that psychology made a Faustian deal with the medical model over fifty years ago when it uncritically accepted the call to provide psychiatric services to returning veterans of World War II. The medical model was perhaps permanently stamped, however, at the famed Boulder conference in 1949, where psychology’s bible of training was developed, under protest by many, with an acceptance of medical language and the concept of “mental disease.” Later, with the passing of freedom of choice legislation guaranteeing parity with psychiatrists, psychologists learned to treat clients in private offices and collect from third-party payers requiring only a psychiatric diagnosis for reimbursement. The other mental health professions soon followed suit—all vying to get a slice of the pie, not thinking about the long-term consequences of a high-fat, highcarbohydrate diet. Soon thereafter, in the mid-1980s, the rising tide of the medical model reached dangerous levels of influence. Drowning any possibilities for other ways of understanding human challenges, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the leading source of research funding for psychotherapy, decided to apply the same methodology used in drug research to evaluate psychotherapy—the randomized clinical trial (RCT). Adopting the RCT for evaluating psychotherapy had profound ramifications...
eBook - ePubMental Health in Rural America
A Field Guide
- Ellen Greene Stewart(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...10 Treatment Philosophies and Models We are in the age of the cognitive revolution. However, has that become a one-size-fits-all way of thinking? There are several helpful evidence-based cognitive models that are powerful tools for clients, but is that all there is? This chapter surveys some little used theories that lend themselves beautifully to rural clientele. They include ecopsychology, the Sanctuary Model, community psychology, trauma-informed therapy, and the public health approach. The Flavor of the Year: Beyond CBT for All The big change since the start of the 21st century is that we are now in what many in the field call the cognitive revolution. It is characterized by a move toward evidence-based therapies, which are easier to quantify than the popular depth psychologies of the 19th and 20th centuries such as psychoanalytic and interpersonal therapies. Some practitioners believe that this over-quantification results in a rigid, inflexible therapy that lends itself to a one-size-fits-all methodology. Those practitioners who are not affiliated with the academic or science-based psychologies believe that clinical experience is equally important as research results. Then again, there are many who are comfortable in the middle area between the academic- or science-based and the clinical skills–based therapies. These evidence-based life-changing therapies are cost-effective to the health care system. The cost is mostly recouped in the reduced cost of physical health care for people who have physical as well as mental health problems. On top of that is the saving on welfare payments. So there would be no net cost increase in making these therapies more widely available. In the 1980s the trend was for brief psychotherapies, and managed care companies were quick to embrace this trend for its cost-effectiveness, with limited number of sessions on a majority of health care plans...
eBook - ePub- Uwe P. Gielen, Jefferson M. Fish, Juris G. Draguns, Uwe P. Gielen, Jefferson M. Fish, Juris G. Draguns(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...No culture stands by idly in the face of human suffering; all human societies have evolved methods aimed at restoring physical health, promoting psychological contentment, and achieving spiritual serenity. Healing as a concept then refers to the aggregate of techniques used to make human beings whole again by counteracting distress in the body, mind, and spirit. In traditional cultures, healers tended to address the gamut of human dysfunction. In the modern era, this holistic orientation to healing has been increasingly compromised and strained, if not irretrievably lost. Fragmentation and specialization have supplanted undifferentiated unity as subdisciplines within and outside medicine; psychology, counseling, nursing, and religious ministry complement each other’s services and often minister to, and even compete for, the same clients. Systems of alternative medicine have evolved, largely in order to restore coherence to the human strivings for promoting health and overcoming illness. As several chapters in this volume make clear, practitioners of alternative medicine are widely represented and consulted both within the United States and elsewhere. In philosophy, Rene Descartes drew a sharp line between the body and the mind. In the ensuing centuries, the secularization of Western civilization largely banished spiritual problems from the purview of scientifically based biomedical and psychological interventions, thereby extending separation of church and state to the individual on the intrapsychic plane. In her chapter in this volume, Michele Hirsch further develops some aspects of this theme. Psychotherapy In response to the compartmentalization of human experience, the enterprise of psychotherapy has come into being. It may be provisionally defined as “a method of working with patients/clients to assist them to modify, change, or reduce factors that interfere with effective living” (Fabrikant, 1984, p.184)...
eBook - ePubPersonality Theories
Critical Perspectives
- Albert Ellis, Mike Abrams, Lidia Dengelegi Abrams(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...With the Enlightenment, mental disorders were once again regarded as diseases, but the clinical treatment of the mentally ill did not immediately improve. The introduction of the medical model, however, led to mental illness being seen as a condition requiring treatment rather than punishment; it also resulted in advances in classification. On the negative side, the medical model produced such treatments as insulin shock and lobotomy, which did at least as much harm as good. Kretschmer and Sheldon classified body types and held them responsible for personality characteristics. These ideas led to new research but proved to be false leads. Thomas Szasz challenged the medical model and considered mental disorders to be a myth. His views are at least a warning of the dangers of labeling people. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), put out by the American Psychiatric Association, has become the North American standard for diagnoses, and it undergoes periodic revision. It eventually took on an atheoretical and operational view of diagnoses. Later editions using this approach have resulted in increased reliability of diagnoses....
eBook - ePubThe Great Psychotherapy Debate
The Evidence for What Makes Psychotherapy Work
- Bruce E. Wampold, Zac E. Imel(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In most instances, psychotherapy exists within a health delivery system that exerts further pressure to progress along a narrow corridor. So constrained, psychotherapy exists as it is, but its future is to be determined, primarily by the actors whose influence is most boldly exerted. This book’s thesis, which is outside the canonical view yet built upon the very evidence collected within that canon, provides an alternative course for the future. The course, which was abandoned some time ago and is updated here under the name “The Contextual Model,” may, if we can be so bold, be the one that has more potential to benefit patients than the course presently being pursued. Before the evidence can be presented for a contextual view of psychotherapy, there are certain consequences from history that need to be fully understood. How did we get here? And what was omitted to make certain progressions? Several intertwined stories need to be examined: the stories of medicine, research methods (particularly clinical trials), and psychotherapy. Of course, each of these histories could fill a volume on their own (indeed, there are several volumes on each), but abbreviated versions are sufficient to take notice of important elements. Medicine Medicine is the dominant healing practice in Western cultures. It is the application of scientific knowledge to cure disease, alleviate physical suffering, and prolong life. However, modern medicine is a recent invention and one that evolved from a tradition of healing practices, most of which medicine would rather not claim as antecedents. The Origins of Medicine as a Healing Practice Healing practices appear in the earliest humans and characterize, in an important way, the essential nature of humanness: According to Sir William Osler (1932), the desire to take medicine is one feature that distinguishes hominids from their fellow creatures…...
