Mental Disorders ARE Medical Diseases
Among mental health professionals, the classification of mental disorders has long been debated. Approaching this debate from a medical model, Sheldon H. Preskorn claims that mental disorders are medical diseases.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the psychoanalytical approach dominated the field to mental illness. At the time, it was believed that personal reflection would prove to be the successful form of treatment. However, the promise to cure was never fulfilled. As advancements in medical technology progressed, American psychiatry moved away from psychoanalysis and focused more so on a medial approach. Medications were found that alleviated the symptoms of mental illness. For Preskorn, the discovery and proven success of medical treatment proves that mental illnesses are linked to biological factors.
Psychiatric and neuroscience research have found that most serious mental illnesses have an “organic basis in terms of disturbed brain function” (Preskorn, 32). Studies using brain imaging have shown disturbances in the structure and function of the brain of people who are plagued with mental illnesses. Studies on twins have also shown that there is a genetic link to mental illness. One such study quoted in David Mechanic’s article “Mental Health and Mental Illness: Definitions and Perspectives” showed that children adopted by mother’s with schizophrenia were more likely to have illnesses that afflicted their biological mothers than their adoptive mothers.
While one universal theory to the causation of mental illness is inapplicable, the medical model follows a more integrated approach than did the psychoanalytical model. It allows for several possibilities for causation, including environmental stressors. It also does not determine that chemical imbalances in the brain are the only reason for mental illness; however it believes that the possibility must always be taken into consideration when diagnosing a patient. The medical model uses four levels of diagnosis in consideration for the most appropriate treatment of patients: symptomatic, syndromic, pathophysiologic and etiologic.
The medical model has been accused of shifting responsibility away from the patient afflicted with a mental illness. In spite of that belief, practitioners of the medical approach believe that it is still the responsibility of the patient to control their illness through the use of their medication. In regarding mental illness as a disease, patients are relieved of the stigmatized associated with those diagnosed as mentally ill. Society can no longer blame them for being so afflicted. Preskorn used an effective example of diabetics. Society does not blame them for being diabetics and they are still responsible for taking their insulin as needed.
Researchers from Toronto, Texas and New York have found that benign brain tumors, found in the pituitary gland, can be the cause of several ailments by affecting the body’s hormone production. One of such ills cited was depression, a mental illness according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by mental health professionals, a disease that lowers the levels of serotonin in the body.
Mental illnesses should be considered as medical disease. They affect the bodily functions should as emotions, behaviors and cognitions.