Medical model

Medical model is the term coined by psychiatrist R. D. Laing in his The Politics of the Family and Other Essays (1971), for the "set of procedures in which all doctors are trained." It includes complaint, history, physical examination, ancillary tests if needed, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis with and without treatment.

The medical model has proven highly successful and even indispensable in many contexts; it is difficult to name a plausible alternative to medical diagnosis and treatment for a depressed skull fracture.

The medical model embodies basic assumptions about medicine that drive research and theorizing about physical or psychological difficulties on a basis of causation and remediation.

It can be contrasted with other models that make different basic assumptions. Examples include holistic model of the alternative health movement and the social model of the disability rights movement, as well as to biopsychosocial and recovery models of mental disorders. For example, Gregory Bateson's double bind theory of schizophrenia focuses on environmental rather than medical causes. The medical model and these alternative models do not have to be mutually exclusive. A model is not a statement of absolute reality or a belief system but a tool for helping patients. Thus, utility is the main criterion, and the utility of a model depends on context.

Medical model is a term in psychology, indicating the assumption that abnormal behavior is the result of physical problems and should be treated medically. Sometimes, that is clearly true, as with traumatic brain injury. In other cases, there has always been doubt about the medical model. In 1927, Sigmund Freud observed, "Psychoanalysis falls under the head of psychology; not of medical psychology in the old sense, nor of psychology of morbid processes, but simply of psychology."

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