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Development of mental health care in modern society essay

Mental illness or mental disorder is a word used for any state that influences an individual’s feeling, performance or opinion in a method that is upsetting or functioning poorly.

There are some sources which now also refer the mental illness in an aspect that hampers functioning and causes distress. Some researchers still refer the mental illness as the disease of mind and this stigma was accepted since ages. However, this attitude regarding the mental illness is gradually fading as new researches open an insight into the actual cause of the mental illness in a biological term. Even though the biological terms have paved the way to a better treatment but they have not established an exact link between the cause and the effect. The findings were often bazaar.

Recent researches have established an insight and raised concerns into the treatment of mental illness. This paradigm could be explained and analyzed with the use of the medical model which is the base and key treatment pillar for every psychiatric condition these days and thus highlighting the critiques of the medical model with personal experience as evidences, concepts and theories. The most common and the dominant model used in the present day scenario in psychiatry is the medical model. The basic statement or the assumption of the medical model is that the psychological disorders are various forms of diseases.

How the disease began or the symptoms, the variety of cases, the disease path and progress, its response to the treatment and the adjoining features observed in the psychological disorder are observed to be equivalent to what happens in physical disease. The medical model in psychiatry presumes that diseases of any origin or type could be fully examined and understood with respect to any abnormal biological variable. Therefore according to the medical an underlying physical mechanism would be the exact cause of psychological disorder and the treatment would focus on the alteration of the biological variable responsible for it. However, this model has been a point of criticism as being insufficient for perceptive.

“ The crippling imperfection of the medical model is that, it can make provision neither for the person as a whole nor for data of physiological or ocial nature” ( Engel 1980). Biology itself cannot be considered the root cause of the psychological disorder. This model should also be related with other models too at a level that includes psychosomatic processes like social and cognitive levels. For the correct understanding of the psychological disorder, it is important to assimilate knowledge from various stages in the biological levels. It is important to understand that each level has got its own significance and strength but has got limitations too. The medical model provides a good explanation of “ from”, that is, it also gives answer to “ how” i.

e. how a particular disease occurs and its mechanism. The medical model however does not provide a perfect explanation of the function of the disease process. That means the biology cannot answer to the why statement of the question: what is the main cause of the disorder why, what is its function, purpose or meaning? For the understanding of the phenomena both sets of the question are important.

Assimilation of both the approaches should be there. In the year 1961, The Myth Of Mental Illness by Thomas Szaaz offered an insight into the graveness of the issues concerning medical model. In this Saaz offers a logical and conceptual critique on the medical model. Mind is compared as an object by the medical model.

He describes that medical model aims to bond mind and body together and uses its assumption for defining, explaining, justification, thoughts and behavior as diseases medically. Szaaz criticizes the expression that mind is an object by bringing on the already documented epistemological, linguistic and ontological disparity stuck between intellect and subject. The mind is entirely dissimilar from body, matter or brain. The body is compared to an object but the mind is not. The body is recognized and considered through the method and process of chemistry and physics, however, the mind is studied through the means of communication, understanding and introspection. For the description of the body literal language is used, on the other hand the language used to describe the mind is metaphorical.

The purpose, societal application and consequences of the medical model are also a debatable issue. It denotes that medical model in psychiatry is a combination of channelized and orderly practices which creates overt social control. The persons who grumble or display certain forms of publicly non satisfactory or undesired and unwanted behavior and are identified by the criterion of mood and actions for having mental illness, leave them susceptible to be treated and directed underneath the theoretical mental health system. Involuntary imprisonment and managing them without permission could be regarded as a means of social control. In the medical model the basic focus is placed on the symptoms and the condition is treated medically and the original or the exact cause of the problem is not dealt or taken into account. A typical example would be the treatment related to ECT (electroconvulsive therapy).

When the aECT was first introduced in the year 1930’s, the mentally ill were considered to be incapable of making their own decisions in relation to their treatment of choice and their care in relation to their treatment. The people were admitted to the hospital involuntarily escorted with the certificates of the physicians concerned or taking care of them. The decisions relating to their treatment and prognosis were undertaken by the concerned physicians, the hospital personnel and those were applied without the knowledge and the consent of the patient. Electroconvulsive therapy is a psychiatric treatment in which electricity was introduced to produce artificial seizures for a therapeutic effect.

The ECT applied in this context produces long term and short term effect on the patient. Most of the studies have proven that the ECT produces short term of in certain cases long term memory loss. These have put forth a concern regarding the personal rights of the patient and the potential misuse of the drug. These have produced concerns regarding the right of the patient and the misuse of this therapy. This has resulted in stigmatization of the medical model in relation to the electroconvulsive therapy and has been a point of discussion. However the concern regarding the misuse is tried to be contrasted and justified with the quality o the treatment, the actors relating to the economy, conflicts of the ideology, and the political reasons.

From the previous researches it is proven that ECT is really worth and effective with some form of depression. But its use as a treatment modality were questioned as it was frequently used in the treatment of other forms of psychiatric diseases without thinking and assessing whether it would be effective for the particular disease. Involuntary confinement and forced dragging can also be considered as a means of societal control. To see them as such would be like hiding the facts.

These common statements are often not taken into consideration by the psychiatrists, the public and the mass media. They never think that those actions would render the psychologically challenged deprived of their independence and forced to take drugs and confined and restrained without being accused or convicted of ny crime. Forced treatment and commitment laws stick to the statement so as to prevent harm to others and to prevent suicide. In the field of psychiatry the medical model acts as ideology and process which inter relates and camouflages with concealed form of societal power and control as medical treatment. On the other hand ‘ David Alder’ describes that, the response of psychiatry in terms of medicine and its related context is deeply rooted and adherent to the medical model. The author state that the medical model is quiet relevant and important in the field of psychiatry by focusing on its clinical significance and use in relation to several other model its particulars and the various other psychiatric tasks which are related to it e.

g. medical, rehabilitative, educative and sociologic development. He describes that medical model is the best in relation to the above mentioned tasks and in the field of psychiatry too. Nevertheless the medical model has always been an area of criticism since years due to its potential practical drawbacks. ‘ Judi Chamberlin’ who underwent many challenges during her life describes a major fault of medical model.

Since the past 25 years, she has developed a powerful insight into the present world psychiatry and becoming a proactive and challenging advocate for her change. She has argued and raised concerns regarding not only the validity of the medical model and mental illness but also the psychiatric response to it. Chamberlin describes her experience regarding the circumstances of her original collapse into a massive depression and how that experience brought her painfully to the verge of containment that transformed her to a challenging and proactive advocate of change. In her descriptions Chamberlin states that, she experienced a miscarriage at the age of 21 and experienced post miscarriage depression. Those psychiatrists who were strict and abided by the medical model tried to treat her condition with the medicines and hospitalizations. They didn’t give attention to the root cause of the problem and did not concentrate on its cure in different angles.

However, she states that it was the loss of the love relationship that stimulated the intense depression within her accompanied with the feeling to die. She found it totally indifferent when her thoughts and emotions were taken into consideration and delta seriously even if they were not relevant to the conserned diagnosis. She was prompted and encouraged to express her feelings and emotions verbally or through cry or what eve means seems appropriate for her. In the medical model such reactions are considered as symptoms and every effort is made to stop the person from expressing it in any way either through drugs, physical restrains or isolated rooms. Nonetheless, all these treatment modalities made her condition more severe and therefore not considering her as a human being. She states that the physical model system which is formulated to help people has in fact the purpose of isolating people and denoting and labeling people who have socially non acceptable behavior.

Drug therapy and electric shock are used to keep the people quiet and make them socially acceptable in the society. However, the person would be still in a state of pain, but the effect of medication and the non responsive state makes it easy for the people around to handle. A perfect remedy would have been to understand her suffering, make her feel better, responsible and guide her to live a life with better understanding instead of treating the condition with drugs and ECT. She clearly states the issues regarding the medical model, its negative aspect and its extensive use in the world of psychiatry today.

When all the issues are taken into consideration the medical model currently being used in the psychiatric treatment would only render the people to be more chronically ill instead of healing them. The various treatment modalities and institutions which rely solely on the medical model cannot be considered as the right place for the healing. The patients with in the mental health care setting are being controlled and their behavior modified into a socially acceptable form with the use of drugs and various treatment modalities. The feelings of the patient, their expression in relation to various stimulus and their freedom is still a big question as the mental hospital in the present world are not being built set the patient free. .

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