The medical model has been at the centre of diagnosis for both physical and mental health conditions for many, many years. The medical model forms a basic standpoint for doctors to base their training to enable them to diagnose people with different conditions and disorders based on their evaluation of a patient (Laing, 1971). This is all well and good in a situation where the patient has physical symptoms, like those of physical conditions like asthma and diabetes. However, this is also used for the diagnosis of patients who are experiencing distress as a result of a trauma. There are no physical symptoms of mental distress, yet the same diagnostic process is still being applied, this is something that is still being challenged and attempts at change are still being made in the present despite the fact it was first identified in the 1960s by R D Laing (David, 2010).
The DSM-5 is a great example of literature devised to allow for the medical model to be used in the diagnosis of mental disorders. The DSM-5 is a piece of literature that illustrates every mental health condition known to man and what the symptoms of these conditions are (Frances, 2013). A good example of a mental health professional who disagreed with the use of the medical model for psychiatric diagnosis was D R Laing. he makes this clean in a lot of his texts as he believed that people who suffered from mental distress were still normal and had just experienced their own version of hell (Laing, 2010).
I feel as though the use of the medical model in relation to mental health needs to be challenged and a shift needs to be made to ensure that people experiencing mental distress receive the best care possible. This is something that I do not think will be possible if we keep applying the medical model to their care, especially not if they keep prescribing medication for 'chemical imbalances' that are not real as a way if trying to make people believe they are being treated (Davis, 2019).