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Medical model
Medical model is the term cited by psychiatrist Ronald D. Laing inhis The Politics of the Family and Other Essays (1971), for the"set of procedures in which all doctors are trained." This setincludes complaint, history, physical examination, ancillary testsif needed, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis with and withouttreatment. Sociologist Erving Goffman, in his Asylums, favorablycompared the medical model, which was a post-Industrial Revolutionoccurrence, with the conduct in the tinkering trades (watch, radio,TV repair). The medical model is an approach to pathology that aimsto find medical treatments for diagnosed symptoms and syndromes andtreats the human body as a very complex mechanism (hence, Goffman'stinkering trade analogy).

Among critics of medical psychiatry, Laing observed that becausethe diagnosis of a mental illness was based on conduct or patientbehavior and not on physical pathology, such a "diagnosis"essentially contravened standard medical procedure and hence themedical model: physical examination and ancillary tests wereconducted, if at all, only after the diagnosis was made. Whereasheart diseases, cancers, and broken bones were diagnosed by evidentphysical pathology discovered during examination and ancillarytests, a mental illness was diagnosed by examining the patient'sbehavior (paranoid delusions, catatonia, hypermania, etc.) insteadof the patient's body tissues.

The medical model drives research and theorizing about physical orpsychological difficulties on a basis of causation andremediation.

It can be contrasted with the holistic model of the alternativehealth movement and the social model of the disability rightsmovement, as well as to biopsychosocial and recovery models ofmental disorders.

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