Giving up the disease model of mental disorder

I mentioned in my Lancet Psychiatry letter that doctors, because of their medical training, have difficulty in giving up the disease model of mental disorder. Yet this is what the Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) would encourage them to do (see position statement). This is not a controversial argument. It fits with the WHO QualityRights initiative (see recent Lancet Psychiatry article). As the article says, "A movement to profoundly transform the way mental health care is delivered and to change attitudes towards people with psychosocial, intellectual, and cognitive disabilities is gaining momentum globally".

DCP does not totally dismiss the value of psychiatric classification if only because "these systems provide seemingly ‘tangible’ entities for use in administrative, benefits, and insurance systems". But it does argue for "an approach that is multi-factorial, contextualises distress and behaviour, and acknowledges the complexity of the interactions involved in all human experience". Read how balanced the perspective is. It is relevant to the teaching of doctors as well as clinical psychologists and others working in the mental health field.