The disease model of addiction describes an addiction as a lifelong disease involving biologic and environmental sources of origin. The traditional medical model of disease requires only that an abnormal condition be present that causes discomfort, dysfunction, or distress to the individual afflicted. The contemporary medical model attributes addiction, in part, to changes in the brain's mesolimbic pathway. The medical model also takes into consideration that such disease may be the result of other biologic, psychologic, or sociologic entities despite an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms of these entities.
Within the disease model of addiction, a genetic predisposition is believed to be present. An environmental event is also felt likely to be required. These hypotheses would explain the result of adoption and twin studies that have been carried out, indicating that twins separated at birth have a higher likelihood of concordance for addictive disease than would be expected were there not a genetic component, and indicating that these twins have a lower likelihood of concordance for addictive disease than do twins who remain together in identical environments.
Read more about Disease Model Of Addiction: Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words disease, model and/or addiction:
“Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)