2.1 Comparing medical approaches

Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that deals with mental health. Doctors such as general practitioners and psychiatrists draw on models of illness to assess a patient and provide a diagnosis. The biomedical model forms the basis of modern medical practice, although there are few doctors nowadays who would not also draw on social and psychological explanations of mental ill health.

Biomedicine explains health in relation to biology. It attaches importance to learning about body structure (anatomy) and systems (physiology) and understanding mechanisms like the circulation of blood, hormone functions and the workings of the brain. This view offers a particular and distinctive way of ‘seeing’ and understanding health in relation to the body. Certain tests establish what is wrong and medicines are given as a cure or to alleviate symptoms, or surgery repairs or replaces defective body parts.

Figure 6: The Brain – Cerebral cortex viewed under the microscope.

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An image of the cerebral cortex viewed under the microscope.

Figure 6: The Brain – Cerebral cortex viewed under the microscope.

The biomedical model tends to focus attention on the individual, not groups of people or the health of society more generally. Under this model, health services are geared mainly towards sick people and high value is placed on specialised medical services. Doctors and other qualified experts act as gatekeepers to services. The main function of a health service is remedial or curative, aimed at getting people back to productive lives.

In the next activity you’ll consider two contrasting medical approaches.

Symptoms may overlap between diagnoses or may not meet the criteria for a particular ‘disorder’, but still require treatment. You may have noticed that George’s GP thought he had a combination of anxiety and depression. Taking these issues as well as the views of patient groups into consideration, there has been a move over recent years, and particularly within the UK, towards a more tailored approach to diagnosis and management of mental health that takes the lead from and actively involves the patient (Gask et al., 2009).

With the emergence of biological psychiatry and modern advances in brain and behavioural sciences, most mental illnesses are increasingly presumed to have a neurobiological basis, even if that basis is, as yet, poorly understood.