By Kim Nelson, MA, with Becky Shipkosky

Let’s say you’re a person with a mental health diagnosis—maybe it’s bipolar, or schizophrenia, or perhaps a personality disorder. There’s a good chance that your contact with mental health providers has felt “top-down” or prescriptive, as opposed to collaborative. This is probably owing to the fact that the medical model of mental health care has been the prevailing one for the past several decades, and it takes a biological view—that is, that mental-health disorders have a physical or biological cause and should be treated as such.

This perspective has contributed profoundly to the mental health field, particularly in the areas of genetics and pharmaceuticals. It has, however, received a good deal of criticism as well. Author, anthropologist, and psychotherapist James Davies has shared his opinion that “The medical model has presided over four decades of flat-lining outcomes.” Davies goes on to cite the absence of improvement in psychiatric medications since the........

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