A Comparison of Two Therapeutic Approaches to Mental Disorders

A Comparison of Two Therapeutic Approaches to Mental Disorders

The essence of the medical model is the view that abnormal behaviours

like mental disorders result from physical problems and should be

treated medically, in other words; mental disorders resemble physical

diseases, in that they are both illness of the body. As a result, the

medical approach would argue that mental illness and therapeutic

action should be taken from the medical perspective.

Whereas the psychodynamic approach concerning mental illness put

forward by Freud was based partly on his psychosexual development

theory. In essence, the child passes through stages such as oral, anal

etc. Major conflicts or excessive gratification at any of these stages

can lead to fixation, therefore if an adult experiences great personal

problems, he or she will tend to show regression (going back through

the stages of the psychosexual development) to the stage at which he

or she had previously been fixated. Thus because conflicts cause

anxiety, and the ego defends itself against anxiety by using several

defence mechanisms to prevent traumatic thoughts and feelings reaching

consciousness, mental disorders can arise when an individual has

unresolved conflicts and traumas from childhood. Defence mechanisms

may be used to reduce the anxiety caused by such unresolved conflicts,

but they act more as sticking plaster than as a way of sorting out an

individuals problems.

The medical model has clear implications for treatment. If mental

illnesses are basically illnesses of the body, then treatment should

involve direct manipulation of bodily processes. For example, if a

mental dis...

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...relationships were de-emphasised and there was undue

focus on childhood experiences and sexual problems. The medical

approach has proved positive where psychodynamic therapies have failed

in including medically genetic factors and that drug therapies have

proved effective, at least in the sense of reducing the symptoms of

those suffering from mental disorders. Still there are negative sides,

the medical approach ignores unlike the psychodynamic the more

subjective side to disorders or background experiences, it has also

been argued that with drug-centred therapies people stop working threw

for example what would have been considered normal depression and

finding out the cause, now “pop pills” to fix what was once every day

life problems whereas the psychodynamic approach is more prone to work

these problems out slowly.