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The Medical Model of Madness is Madness
Issues of mental distress should not be labelled as a medical diagnosis.
How our stress and anxieties manifest themselves have always been culturally determined, at least, in part. The symptoms of our mental unrest reflect the matters and concerns of our society. Although the underlying source of the distress may transcend time and culture, how it is presented may not.
A central anxiety may reveal itself in a number of different behaviours partially dependent on the culture of the time. For example, only in our time of relative plenty will a person’s trauma and distress be manifested as an eating disorder. In times of scarcity or famine, the manifestation of distress will be in different clothes.
A person’s delusions will reflect the ideologies and mores of the society they live in. In recent decades, delusions around religion have been superseded by those concerning science and technology.
Much of a person’s unusual or distressing behaviours are specific to their life story. The uniqueness of every presentation is surely proof that the experience is outside the boundaries of any disease model.
Society may use madness to highlight certain behaviours as unacceptable or abnormal according to the prevailing beliefs and values. Certain unwanted behaviours or ideas will be medicalised as forms of madness to reflect society’s disapproval. For example, it was only a few decades ago when being gay wasn’t just a crime but also a medical classification of mental illness. There is a long history, across many countries where the medical profession has been complicit in diagnosing political dissidents as mad. Unlike physical medical issues, like a broken leg or diabetes, types of mental illness can suddenly be removed or adapted to reflect the changes in the values of society. Yet a broken leg will always be a broken leg.
In 1851 Dr Samuel Cartwright announced in a New Orleans medical journal a psychiatric condition he labelled ‘dreapetomania,’ which he described as an uncontrollable urge to run away as observed in black slaves…
