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Medical Model (Psychology)
A model of psycho-pathology that frames psychological disorders as disorders of underlying physical mechanisms (such as biochemical and physiological processes). Since this model views the etiology of any psychological disorder to be physiological, the implications of this approach are that research and treatment should focus on understanding and altering biological malfunctioning. This model has been criticized for failing to consider social and cognitive causes of psychological disorders. The biopsychosocial model, an alternative to the medical model, retains the disease model as the basic assumption but views psychological disorders as multilayered phenomena in which social, cognitive, and physiological factors play an important role. A primary assumption of the medical model is that mental illnesses have a physical cause and that diagnosis will assist in determining etiology, ...