B1: the biomedical model of health and alternatives
In this report I will be explaining learning outcome B of unit 10
which are models of health, complementary medicine,
medicalisation and the clinical iceberg. The models of health are
approaching that professionals use for their patients which are
biomedical model or the social model of health. The biomedical
model of health is where they look at your illness instead of the
individual wellbeing. This means this prevents diseases and pushes
people who are ill back into society. This model will help you into
recover and get back into society for it to continue functioning.
However, this model does not look at the individual such as their wellbeing or other needs. The NHS
is an example of the biomedical model of health where they look at the illness and try to make
recovery the quickest possible. Advantages of the biomedical model is that it helps recover sick
people, prevents illness from occurring and help society to function. Disadvantages of the
biomedical model is it does not help environmental factors such as making buildings accessible for
disable people. Some people are in favour of this model and prefer it as it treats illnesses and
recovery. Even through the biomedical model is good for improving health it does not look at
wellbeing of the individual or factors that affect health such as pollution. In my opinion, the
biomedical model is good for improving health however we also need to look at other individual
needs such as their emotional, spiritual or social needs. Others can argue that the biomedical model
of health is not useful as it does not help certain individual needs. Another advantage of this is that
is it based on scientific evidence and all treatment has science behind it. This method is very useful
for people seeking help and this method will help to recover the person. However, this does mean
only medical situations will get fixed instead of the other issues such as emotional or social. This
could cause problems between the service user and the professional as the service user may feel like
they not getting the help needed and feel unwanted. By the professional just treating the medical
issue could means other issues such as the patient not feeling listen to or cared about. This is causing
a problem where the patient may not seek help again from a service leading to the patient not
recovering. Or if the other issues are not fixed this could lead to mental health or discrimination
issues.
Social model of health:
The social model of health is an approach that look at
the individual emotional, spiritual or social needs
instead of just looking at the illness like the medical
model. They will look at environmental factors that
cause illness such as unclean water or a pollutant area.
This model is the opposite of the biomedical model as
they look at other needs that help the individual. Like in
unit 12, they would look at buildings accessible for
disable people to feel included. Some people could
agree with this model more as it includes every need
instead of feeling unincluded like in the biomedical
model. The biomedical model could make an individual
feel unwanted and feel like they not being treated like a human where the social model could feel
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