This approach argues that mental disorders are caused by abnormalities in brain structure or chemistry, which can be identified and treated through biological interventions such as medication or brain stimulation. A key idea of the biological approach is that mental disorders are often inherited. Mental disorders are increasingly understood from a biological point of view. We tested the effects of biological explanations among mental health clinicians, specifically examining their empathy for patients.
Conventional wisdom suggests that biological explanations reduce the perception of guilt against people with mental disorders, which could increase empathy. However, conceptualizing mental disorders from a biological point of view can make patients appear physiologically different from “normal” people and who are governed by genetic or neurochemical anomalies rather than by their own human will, which can lead to negative social attitudes and dehumanization. This suggests that biological explanations may actually decrease empathy. In fact, we found that biological explanations significantly reduce doctors' empathy.
This is alarming because doctors' empathy is important for the therapeutic alliance between mental health providers and patients and significantly predicts positive clinical outcomes. There are many different ways to think about topics in psychology. The biological perspective is a way of looking at psychological problems by studying the physical basis of animal and human behavior. It's one of the main perspectives in psychology and involves things like the study of the brain, the immune system, the nervous system, and genetics. The biological approach (or the medical model) is based on the view that psychological disorders can be explained in the same way as physical disorders, that is, they are manifestations of an underlying biochemical or physiological dysfunction, which may or may not have a known cause.
The biological approach is also called a medical model because it is based on the idea of diagnosing physical symptoms and providing appropriate treatments, as is the case with physical illnesses. The biological perspective considers that psychological disorders are related to biological phenomena, such as genetic factors, chemical imbalances and brain anomalies; it has gained considerable attention and acceptance in recent decades (Wyatt and Midkiff, 200) .Evidence from many sources indicates that most psychological disorders have a genetic component; in fact, there is no doubt that some disorders are largely due to genetic factors. The graph in Figure PD, 8, shows the heritability estimates of schizophrenia. Psychologists who self-identified as professionals rather than researchers and who had a doctorate in clinical psychology or a doctorate in clinical psychology were contacted in their membership information for the American Psychological Association.
They discovered that medical treatments were believed to be more useful for conditions with a physical cause and psychological treatments for those with a psychological cause. The 18 coding categories of causes are graphed based on their average biological and psychological ratings (A), average environmental and psychological ratings (B), and average environmental and biological ratings (C). So, perhaps the best way to think about psychological disorders is to consider them to originate from a combination of biological and psychological processes. Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, a psychology educator and the author of the book Everything Psychology Book.
Written by Kendra Cherry, MSed Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator and author of the book Everything Psychology Book. Stressful life events and social factors were considered psychological and environmental, but not biological, while inheritance and biological trauma were considered biological, but not psychological or environmental. That is, the positive correlation between psychological and environmental ratings seems to have been obtained because the most important environmental causes of the domain of mental disorders are social environmental factors, which have a greater affinity with psychological mechanisms.
