Compare two therapeutic approaches to mental disorders

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Compare two therapeutic approaches to mental disorders

The essence of the medical model is the view that abnormal behaviours like mental disorders result from physical problems and should be treated medically, in other words; mental disorders resemble physical diseases, in that they are both illness of the body. As a result, the medical approach would argue that mental illness and therapeutic action should be taken from the medical perspective.

Whereas the psychodynamic approach concerning mental illness put forward by Freud was based partly on his psychosexual development theory. In essence, the child passes through stages such as oral, anal etc. Major conflicts or excessive gratification at any of these stages can lead to fixation, therefore if an adult experiences great personal problems, he or she will tend to show regression (going back through the stages of the psychosexual development) to the stage at which he or she had previously been fixated. Thus because conflicts cause anxiety, and the ego defends itself against anxiety by using several defence mechanisms to prevent traumatic thoughts and feelings reaching consciousness, mental disorders can arise when an individual has unresolved conflicts and traumas from childhood. Defence mechanisms may be used to