An Ecological Model for Dysfunction

Source: http://brainblogger.com/2016/07/20/an-ecological-model-for-dysfunction/

In previous essays, I’ve discussed a way to look at mental disorders, not as discrete medical entities, but as attempts to describe types or patterns of psychosocial problems. I’ve called these dysfunctions that can be placed on dimensions of dysfunction. Dimensions have no breaks between normal and abnormal, between sane and mentally ill; only more or less.

Now, it is time to address the factors in human experience that either cause dysfunction or protect us from it. For convenience, we can clump these factors into the biological, the psychological and the social. Because these factors interact in complex ways, I like to call it an ecological model. This model contrasts with the typical psychiatric one in which mental disorders are seen as either medical diseases or psychogenic.

The model I’m talking about was first introduced by George Engel in 1977 and was called the <a href="http://brainblogger.com/2006/02/15/bps-the-biopsychosocial-model-of-health-illness/" …

Source: http://brainblogger.com/2016/07/20/an-ecological-model-for-dysfunction/

In previous essays, I’ve discussed a way to look at mental disorders, not as discrete medical entities, but as attempts to describe types or patterns of psychosocial problems. I’ve called these dysfunctions that can be placed on dimensions of dysfunction. Dimensions have no breaks between normal and abnormal, between sane and mentally ill; only more or less.

Now, it is time to address the factors in human experience that either cause dysfunction or protect us from it. For convenience, we can clump these factors into the biological, the psychological and the social. Because these factors interact in complex ways, I like to call it an ecological model. This model contrasts with the typical psychiatric one in which mental disorders are seen as either medical diseases or psychogenic.

The model I’m talking about was first introduced by George Engel in 1977 and was called the <a href="http://brainblogger.com/2006/02/15/bps-the-biopsychosocial-model-of-health-illness/" …

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