12.4 Mental Health: Models and Treatments
Kathryn Burrows
In this section, we explore the different models of mental health and mental illness. These models come to us from different academic disciplines—psychology, psychiatry, and sociology. All three have something to offer to help us understand mental health and mental illness.
Medical and Psychological Models of Mental Health and Mental Illness
The dominant models of mental illness are biological, medical, and psychological, and so are important to learn about even in a sociology course! Cultural views and beliefs about mental illness have varied enormously throughout history. For example, ancient humans once believed that mental illness was caused by the influence of evil spirits over the afflicted person. Accordingly, treatments back then involved removing part of the patient’s skull to allow the demon to escape. Later, during the Middle Ages, mental illness was thought to be connected to the moon (hence the term lunacy). Another common belief was that a person with mental illness was being punished by God.
Fortunately, we’ve come a long way since then. However, scientists are still struggling to pinpoint exactly what causes mental illness. Most people, however, agree that mental illness can be influenced by a variety of things, including biological factors, personal history and upbringing, and lifestyle. To help provide a framework for understanding these potential causes, experts have developed a number of different models, which we’ll explore here.
They look for problems or irregularities in the body that are causing the symptoms. Adherents of the medical model believe that mental illness is primarily caused by biological factors such as abnormal brain chemistry or genetic predisposition (McLeod 2023).
Medical model
The medical model of mental illness has proven to be true in many cases. For example, depression has long been linked to deficiencies in certain neurotransmitters (a chemical substance that is released at the end of a nerve fiber), and schizophrenia has been shown to run in families. Science like this forms the basis of psychopharmacology, which is the treatment of mental illness with medication that adjusts the level of neurotransmitters present in the brain. Researchers still do not know what turns on or off the brain/chromosome structures. The result is an impairment of a person’s overall level of functioning. However, critics of the medical model believe that it is too simple because it ignores important social factors in a person’s life.
Psychological model
As you might expect, in the psychological model of mental illness, psychologists look at psychological factors to explain and treat mental illness. For example, they look at attachment theory, which is a theory that examines how you relate to other people. In fact, there are over 500 different psychological models of therapy—there is a right model for everybody, and a psychologist’s or therapist’s job is to figure ou