The not so great divide? Psychologists and psychiatrists take stands on the medical and psychosocial models of mental illness.

Abstract

Mental health practitioners' positions on the etiology and treatment of mental illness have traditionally been studied from a unidimensional perspective, assuming a bipolar attitudinal continuum ranging from psychosocial to medical ideology. This assumption is tested from the responses of 82 psychologists and 69 psychiatrists to the newly developed 63-item, 6-point Likert scale, Mental Health Questionnaire (MHQ). Factor analysis detected 6 distinctive factors: biogenetic psychopathology, psychosocial perspectives, medical ideology, diagnosis, drug treatment, and sociocultural values.