The magic wand and biological determinism. The two faces of neoliberalism

According to Belgian psychologist Paul Verhaeghe, the psychiatric world is riven by two warring factions. On the one side there is the medical or illness model, which assumes that all mental illness stems from biological or genetic defects. Think of low serotonin levels ‘causing’ depression. Treatment involves taking pills, often indefinitely, to relieve the symptoms. Mental disorders are frequently viewed as lifelong afflictions a person must adjust to. The medical model is the dominant approach, adhered to by the majority of clinicians and doctors.

On the opposite terrain is what is known as the ‘biopsychosocial’ model. Under this way of thinking biology or genetics is relegated to a secondary position. Diagnosis focuses on the broader social context facing the individual and treatment is tailored to a person’s circumstances. This model is also far more open to a person making a recovery from mental illness.

Verhaeghe is resolutely on the minority side of the argument. “The vast majority of mental disorders are not illnesses,” he asserts, “but biopsychosocial manifestations in individuals of broader social problems.”

I believe the biopsychosocial model is essential to understanding how our capitalist, neoliberal society is at the root of many mental and physical illnesses. There is overwhelming evidence of the crucial role factors like childhood poverty, inequality, economic insecurity, loneliness, migration and bullying in increasing the risk of mental illness. According to one UK psychology professor, Richard Bentall, the link between childhood trauma and future psychiatric problems is a strong as that between smoking and lung cancer. In contrast, the medical model of mental illness just presents a closed mind.

But the biopsychosocial model also has a sinister side. It is being used to bully disabled people out of social security benefits by insisting they can make miraculous recoveries from their conditions. Disability, here, is regarded as partially caused by the attitude of the sick or disabled person. Welcome to the world-view of ‘welfare reform’ in the UK.

In defending the government’s transformation of the Disability Living Allowance into Personal Independence Payments, Conservative minister Lord Freud (the same one who believes food banks have mushroomed because they offer a free good) told the House of Lords that ‘we have gone for the biopsychosocial model’.

According to a report from the Centre for Welfare Reform, “the biopsychosocial model has been used to create new obligations for those suffering from common health problems, such as the responsibility to ‘recognise that the sick role is temporary, in the expectation of recovery’”.

In one case, the Department for Work & Pensions funded a medical trial for people with ME which was presented as an exciting success for biopsychosocial intervention. But the standard for ‘recovery’ was lowered after the research began meaning that a person’s condition could have worsened and they were still counted as having ‘recovered’.

Here is 'Biopsychosocial Man' in action: 

The DWP has incrementally re-classified the work related activity group of Employment and Support Allowance claimants (people judged unfit for work) as not really disabled. Before, the government only asserted that people in the WRAG group might be able to work at some point in the future and that full-time work could damage their health. Now, they are subject to a ‘shocking’ level of sanctions and, for new claimants, paid the same in benefits as ordinary JSA claimants, as an incentive, ministers say, to find work.

At the same time the government is trying to re-package unemployment as a personal failing or mental illness, as opposed to a social problem beyond the power of the individual to rectify. There are now psychologists in job centres and job coaches in GP surgeries.

This indicates a fatal flaw in the biopsychosocial model. When it applied to the individual alone and their ‘wrong attitudes’, it becomes coercive, tyrannical and vindictive. Applied to society at large, it is liberating.

Under neoliberalism, an unsuccessful person is either lazy or sick. If they are sick, they need pharmaceutical assistance (which creates a steady stream of profits for pharmaceutical companies). If they are lazy, their misguided attitudes need to be corrected by enlightened experts. Two sides of the same battered coin, which, sadly, is still legal tender. The social and economic organisation of society is taken as a given, and not worthy of consideration.

The medical model strikes me as a dead end, like trying to argue with someone who has their fingers lodged firmly in their ears. But the biopsychosocial model can be both oppressive and illuminating. Perhaps we need to drop the ‘psycho’. A biosocial model of illness has great explanatory power and it can’t be manipulated to scapegoat people and cloak the interests of the powerful.