How appropriate is a "medical model" in psychiatric practice?
Claghorn, J.L.; Mathew, R.J.
Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 41(12 Part 2): 3-5
1980
ISSN/ISBN: 0160-6689 PMID: 7440523 Document Number: 154477
The location of mental hospitals in rural settings made the psychiatrist a truly alienated person. His location remote from cities was also remote from rapid changes occurring in medical practice in other specialties. With the introduction of psychotropic drugs a chain reaction was set in motion which began with the rapid reduction of the state hospital populations and a stimulation of clinical research efforts. The clinical rating scales developed to measure change in drug treated patients, served the purpose of sharpening clinician's thinking about nosology and merged with other ongoing trends to increase the precision of diagnosis which has resulted in the implementation of newer more precise research diagnostic criteria and finally the introduction of the DSM-III. With the study of the physiological pharmacology of these drugs has come a series of findings that offer the potential for increasing diagnostic precision by identifying biological alterations which highly correlate with various psychiatric disorders. It is to an explanation of these trends that this conference is devoted.