Before psychology became a worldwide practice, individuals were discriminated based on their abnormal behavior and mental disabilities. People were labeled as insane and thrown into asylums. Before asylums became a safe place where the mental patients could receive long-term care and treatment, it was a place where they were outcasted from the world until they were “cured.” Previously, “insane” behavior was believed to be shortcomings from which people could be fixed by harsh treatments such as being dunked in cold water and bloodletting. Comparivity since then, medical treatments and diagnosis for those psychologically disabled have improved drastically because of the medical model. The medical model is a biological viewpoint in which abnormal …show more content…
Kraepelin categorized bipolar disorder and depression as exogenous and schizophrenia as endogenous disorder. Kraepelin believed bipolar disorder was caused by an abnormality in body metabolism and that schizophrenia was connected to organic changes in the brain, or a “biochemical imbalance” (Nevid). He claimed that catatonia, hebephrenia and paranoia were three clinical varieties of schizophrenia. Catatonia is characterized by disrupted motor activities, hebephrenia by inappropriate emotional reactions and behaviors, and paranoia characterized by delusions. Before the term schizophrenia came to be, Kraepelin called it dementia praecox, a misleading term meaning ‘dementia of early life’. He believed dementia praecox only occured in young people and that it inevitable led to mental deterioration. Since his time, there has been a “greater understanding of the causes of schizophrenia has opened up multiple avenues for the prevention and treatment of the illness, and a broad range of pharmacological, psychological, and social interventions have been scientifically proven to work” (Burton). Kraepelin also researched and classified the innate manic and depressive cycles of bipolar patients and he created the term ‘manic-depressive psychosis’ after noticing that an acute manic or depressive period was followed by a symptom-free period, he created the term ‘manic-depressive psychosis’. Kraepelin believed that bipolar disorder had episodic course and a more benign outcome than schizophrenia. Today, bipolar disorder is characterized by recurring depression that has abrupt onsets and recovers and there are many types of bipolar disorder such as bipolar I, bipolar II, mixed bipolar and