Ah. Thanks for the link :-)

The 'wellness model' looks like an elaboration on Engles 'bio-psycho-social model'. (Sorry I'm getting the spelling on most of the names wrong).

Typically the debate is between the psychiatrists (with the medical or biological reductionist model) and the anti-psychiatrists (who think that all there is to mental illness is violation of social norms or something like that)

There is also debate between the biological reductionist psychiatrists and psychologists / psychoanalysts / psychodynamic theorists who think that mental disorders are cognitive. (the main debate here is over how we are best to treat mental disorders)

There are some extremists who think that mental disorders are only on one of these levels (either biological or psychological or social). typically the die-hards are the biological psychiatrists who think that mental disorders just are neurological / genetic disorders that need to be treated with medications and / or psychosurgery and / or pre-embryonic selection and the anti-psychiatrists who (sometimes) maintain that there is no such thing as mental disorder (it is just behaviour that society chooses to label 'devient') or that the nature of mental disorder is that it is a social problem (hence society is sick or ill and interventions need to be targeted towards the social system that regards teh behaviour as devient rather than targeted towards the individual).

(Szatz would probably roll over in his grave at the notion of a sick or diseased society! He comes down on the 'there is no such thing' side)

The majority of theorists and clinicians will verbally assent to the bio-psycho-social approach being correct and that all of these factors are important. In practice, however, psychiatry has been criticised for being bio-bio-bio oriented where it is about drugs-drugs-drugs and there is an unwillingness to consider psychological and social interventions.

partly this comes about because the biopsychosocial models simply aren't very well worked out. you can draw three inter-related circles and go on about how 'no level is fundamental' but clearly there is a sense in which biology is more fundamental than psychology (a change in psychology entails a change in biology but not vice versa or in philosophical terminology the mental supervenes on (depends upon) the physical. but similarly biology supervenes on chemistry and chemistry supervenes on physics so why stop at the level of neurophysiology? there is some work on how different levels get explanatory autonomy and about how sometimes interventions at higher levels are appropriate. but there is a lot more work to do.

e.g., if you want to teach someone how to cook you are better off showing him how to cook than you are attempting psychosurgery.

showing him how to cook results in neurological changes. more fine grained than current psychosurgeries. i don't see psychosurgery ever being a cost-effective way to achieve the same results lol.

Dominic Murphy in http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item...pe=2&tid=10687
argues that the sciences of the mind (cognitive neuro-psychology) are working towards models of normal human functioning. mental disorders should be conceived of as breakdowns in these models of normal human functioning. he turns to the sciences of the mind to tell us what normal / healthy functioning is. I think that is a good idea. This is a very new research area... But there has been some work done on cognitive neuro-psychiatry. I'm interested in the prospects for integrating sociology (the anti-pscyhiatry stuff) with that too...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_neuropsychiatry