Beyond the Disease Model of Mental Disorders

By Donald J. Kiesler

Book Overview

Kiesler's Beyond the Disease Model of Mental Disorder goes beyond recent volumes which argue that psychotropic medications are being overused and abused in contemporary mental health settings. Elliott Valenstein, for example, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, recently argues that people should be highly suspicious of the claim that all mental illness is primarily a biochemical disorder. In his 1998 book, Blaming the Brain: The Truth about Drugs and Mental Health, Valenstein does not argue that drugs never work or that patients should discontinue taking medication. Valenstein's central point, instead, is that drugs do not attack the real cause of a disorder, since biochemical theories are an unproven hypothesis and probably a false one.

Inasmuch as Kiesler's volume is concerned exclusively with scientific explanations of mental disorders, it does not review at all the evidence for psychotropic medications or for other treatments of mental disorders. Kiesler does highlight a message similar to that of Valenstein, who rejects the hypothesis that mental illness is primarily a biochemical disorder. After a comprehensive review of the relevant scientific evidence, Kiesler concludes that henceforth the study of mental disorders must be guided by multicausal theories and research that systematically include an array of biological, psychological, and sociocultural causal factors. Kiesler adds that, in order for this to be accomplished, the mental health field and the public at large must first abandon the invalid monocausal biomedical (disease) model of mental disorder.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0275970981
• ISBN13: 9780275970987
• Release Date: March 2017
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A "must-read" book for students of mental disorders

I unreservedly and enthusiastically recommend Kiesler's "Beyond the Disease Model of Mental Disorders." A consistent bias has dominated how mental disorders are presented in contemporary society by psychiatry, by national mental health organizations, by press coverage and by depiction in the popular media. All of these have embraced a rather strict interpretation of the biomedical disease model, which presumes all psychopathological conditions are most sensibly understood and explained when reduced to a physiological level. In addressing the disease model, Kiesler's critique first offers logical refutation of its assumptions and current applications. The central focus of the book, however, and where it really shines, is in Kiesler's encyclopedic and exhaustive review of scientific evidence from the fields of behavior genetics, personality psychology, epidemiology, developmental psychopathology, and prevention science. Kiesler shows convincingly that the available scientific evidence argues against the validity of the biomedical model. His book rightly concludes that a strict biomedical approach is myopic and he urges the mental health fields to abandon the disease model. Similarly, he persuasively advocates against the use of any etiological explanation of psychopathology that embraces a single cause (such as environmental behaviorism). In place of monocausal models, Kiesler recommends substitution of emerging multicausal biopsychosocial theories of mental disorders.I have studied psychopathology all my professional life, and I have used Kiesler's book as a required supplementary text for a graduate level course on psychopathology and as an optional text for undergraduate Abnormal Psychology courses. In addition to these audiences, this book has clear relevance for any mental health educator or textbook writer (in either university or teaching hospital setting) who may have significant influence over predominant themes and trends with the field. Kiesler's last chapter provides a "Universal Outline of Psychopathology" designed to guide restructuring of available undergraduate and graduate abnormal psychology and psychopathology texts.As is typical of Kiesler's work, this book provides an accurate, balanced, and totally thorough account of the state of the literature on causal models on psychopathology. His message is one that cannot be ignored as researchers and students of psychopathology work toward elucidation of all the factors that interact to produce mental disorders.