Medical Model vs. Bioecological Model - Mental Health- Psychologists

The Medical Model (chemical imbalance theory) contrasted with Bronfenbrenner's more holistic approach

Urie Bronfenbrenner was a co-founder of the Head Start preschool program in the United States. He was a Cornell University professor one of the world's leading scholars in developmental psychology, child-rearing and human ecology. Bronfenbrenner emphasized the importance of the social environments in which children are raised and offers a holistic perspective on the development of human psychology, that takes into account many inter-related factors.

Urie Bronfenbrenner

Photo: Cornell University News Service. 9/26/05. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Sept05/Bronfenbrenner.ssl.html

The Medical Model is Inadequate to Address Mental Health Disorders and Difficulties

The simplistic idea that mental illness is a chemical imbalance is similar to the Hindu caste system. Although the cast system is discredited and illegal, the practice persists. The same can be said for the idea that mental illness is a chemical imbalance. The medical model is spoken about in college psychology and psychiatric textbooks as being simplistic and unrealistic, and yet many still subscribe to the idea and base their mental health treatment on the foundation of the medical model.

The obvious next step to the medical model, is that if mental illness is nothing more than a chemical imbalance, then treating mental illness is nothing more than identifying, or labeling a mental illness and prescribing the appropriate medication to alleviate the chemical imbalance. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

There are scores, hundreds of interconnecting factors and variables that are involved in any type of mental illness. Why the emphasis on finding the right chemical mix by prescribing drugs? Because it is convenient, the treating physician never has to leave his desk, and it is less expensive and less time consuming than getting to the roots of the problems.

Works of Urie Bronfenbrenner

Bronfenbrenner was co-author or editor of more than 300 articles and chapters and 14 books, most notably "Two Worlds of Childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R.," "The State of Americans," "The Ecology of Human Development" and "Making Human Beings Human." His writings were widely translated, and his students and colleagues number among today's most internationally influential developmental psychologists.

"Perhaps more than any other single individual, Urie Bronfenbrenner changed America's approach to child rearing and created a new interdisciplinary scholarly field, which he defined as the ecology of human development" stated Cornell President Hunter R. Rawlings. (Cornell University News Service, September 26, 2005).

Children and Family and Mental Health

Educators especially need to be aware of the many factors involved in the personality development of children, as well as the factors involved in children's behavior, and their difficulties in school. Bronfenbrenner's model of child psychology gives a much more plausible explanation and context from which to consider children's psychological difficulties than does the medical model.

Urie Bronfenbrenner has been an influential development psychologist in the past three decades. He was the co-founder of the nationwide Head Start preschool program. Bronfenbrenner taught that the family is the filter through which the larger society influences child development. The family should serve as a buffer against harmful elements in the culture at-large. When family life is damaging or emotionally hurtful, then that can lead to a host of diagnosable psychological of psychiatric problems in children and teens, or which can manifest itself in adult life.

Distinguishing Between Microsystems and Macrosystems

Bronfenbrenner distinguishes between microsystems, which would include settings that a child has in direct personal experience, and which contribute to the shaping of his personality, the family, a day-care center or school, a job setting (for a teenager), and exosystems, which also affect the child's environment and hence the development of his or her personality. This would include the parents' work and workplace, as one example.

Also the macrosystem in which the child lives influences both his behavior and personal growth, the neighborhood in which the family lives, the ethnic identity of the family, and the larger culture in which the entire system exists, are part of this macrosystem.

So we see that there is a complex set of relationships that affect a child's behavior, personality, and adjustment. Most research involving children and psychological difficulties examine only small pieces of the total ecological system. So that much of what is learned is "piecemeal rather than systemic." (Bee, H.; Boyd, D., 2007; pp. 363,364).

A biological/medical model of children's psychological difficulties, then, is very short-sighted. It fails to take into consideration all of the many factors that influence a child's personality or to push them off to the side as if they were only of secondary importance. Biology, genetics, are one small part of the complete picture. In a hundred piece puzzle, biology and genetics might be two pieces in the puzzle. This is what most psychiatrists have been trained in, that most funding for research and clinical studies have concentrated on, that is pharmaceutical research, partly because the most money to be made (from pharmaceutical companies) can be found in research dedicated to making new pharmaceuticals and genetic research.