Models Of Mental Illness
Robert Fettgather, Ph.D. is a counselor, educator, writer and activist residing in Grass Valley, California. He holds a doctorate in psychology and master degrees in both psychology and education. The Institute for Personality and Ability Testing has certified Robert Fettgather as a Stress Management Trainer, and Medical Hypnosis Seminars of the Los Gatos Institute has certified him in Clinical Hypnotherapy. At Santa Clara University, Graduate Department of Education and Counseling Psychology, his studies included Health Education and Behavioral Medicine. He has completed Hospice Training with Hospice of the Valley.
The Medical Model comes from the Biological Tradition and has dominated the field of psychopathology, likening mental illness to physical illness using medical terms and abbreviations: Etiology (cause), history of the illness (Hx), symptoms (Sx), diagnosis (Dx), treatment (Tx) and medication (Rx). Additional medically oriented descriptors include onset (sudden/acute vs gradual), Course (Chronic, Episodic, Time limited) and Prognosis (poor, guarded vs good).
The Social Model is quite different. Critics of the Medical Model call attention to major differences between mental and physical states, asserting that they should not be lumped together. For example, feeling blue (a mental state) is quite different from feeling nauseous (a physical state). Thus, these critics assert that psychopathology is a social construct, a socially shared idea, not a medical one.
The social model of mental illness introduced the idea that mental disorders are a social construct and a shared belief in society. That belief is enabled, in large part, through language and labels. Consider a disorder called “intellectual disability” (ID), previously known as “mental retardation”. Before that, it was known as feeble-mindedness with three levels of severity: idiot, imbecile and moron (Edmund Burke Huey, Backward and Feeble-Minded Children, 1912). These became slang terms of derision like the term “retard” is today.
Intelligism is a term sometimes used to describe bias against people who are less intellectually able.
