Disease Concept

This popular and controversial model of addiction is credited to E. M. Jellinek, who presented a comprehensive disease model of alcoholism in 1960. The disease concept has become an implicit component of the Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous programs, as well as a guiding model for many treatment programs. The World Health Organization acknowledged alcoholism as a medical problem in 1951, and the American Medical Association declared that alcoholism was a treatable illness in 1956. Following Jellinek's work, the American Psychiatric Association began to use the term disease to describe alcoholism in 1965, and the American Medical Association followed in 1966. As with many concepts and theoretical models in the addiction field, the disease concept was originally applied to alcoholism and has been generalized to ...