Recent Approaches
In more recent years psychologist Alice Miller, author of twelve books on mental distress and disorders, including non-psychiatric conditions like falling prey to cults, has informed future parents and former victims about the disastrous consequences of child abuse.
The "trauma model of mental disorders" is the name given by psychiatrist Colin A. Ross to his specific model, which is presented as a solution to the problem of comorbidity in the mental health field. An information packet given to inpatients at the Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma describes the theoretical basis of his trauma model in commonsensical terms:
| “ | The problem faced by many patients is that they did not grow up in a reasonably healthy, normal family. They grew up in an inconsistent, abusive and traumatic family. The very people to whom the child had to attach for survival, were also abuse perpetrators and hurt him or her badly The basic conflict, the deepest pain, and the deepest source of symptoms, is the fact that mom and dad's behavior hurts, did not fit together, and did not make sense. | ” |
In Schizophrenia: an Innovative Approach to Diagnosis and Treatment, Ross determines that some patients diagnosed with schizophrenia have symptoms related to dissociative identity disorder.
The family conditions during infancy are at present considered virtually irrelevant in the psychiatric profession. According to some critics, the goal of modern psychiatric treatment is not to understand how parents could have contributed to the problem or how it can be resolved by improving the relationship. The objective is how to reduce the burden of a psychotic crisis for the family through medication of the disturbed individual. As two trauma researchers have put it, "the ideology of biological reductionism" in psychiatry is "to exonerate the family."
In 2006 a UK researcher and a New Zealand clinical psychologist presented a meta-analysis of schizophrenia studies to psychiatric conferences which they claimed demonstrated that the prevalence of physical and sexual abuse in the histories of those with schizophrenia is very high and is being under-studied.
The researchers admit that not all schizophrenics suffered trauma, but they believe "the level of actual abuse may be an important difference". While conceding that genetics may still be a causative risk factor they maintain "other evidence shows that genes alone do not cause the illness." The review caused considerable debate
In the field of criminology, Lonnie Athens developed a theory of how a process of brutalization by parents or peers that usually occurs in childhood results in violent crimes in adulthood. Richard Rhodes' Why They Kill describes Athens' observations about domestic and societal violence in the criminals' backgrounds. Both Athens and Rhodes reject the genetic inheritance theories.
Other criminologists such as Jonathan Pincus and Dorothy Otnow Lewis believe that, although it is the interaction of childhood abuse and neurological disturbances that explains murder, virtually all of the 150 murderers they studied over a 25-year period had suffered severe abuse as children. Pincus believes that the only feasible remedy for crime would be the prevention of child abuse.
A 2012 review article supports the hypothesis that current or recent trauma may affect an individual's assessment of the more distant past, changing the experience of the past and resulting in dissociative states.
Read more about this topic: Trauma Model Of Mental Disorders
Famous quotes containing the word approaches:
“Bloody men are like bloody buses—
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.”
—Wendy Cope (b. 1945)
“Someone approaches to say his life is ruined
and to fall down at your feet
and pound his head upon the sidewalk.”
—David Ignatow (b. 1914)