Dr. Gregory House: Unorthodox Diagnostician and Substance Abuse Treatment | English

In this case analysis we will discuss about english and below are the summaries point:- Dr. Gregory House: An unorthodox and eccentric diagnostician with a cynical attitude and complex personal history. Presenting Problems: Substance abuse, specifically Vicodin addiction, leading to the need for behavioral therapy. Personal Functioning: Driven by a strong desire to avoid boredom, House is highly motivated and displays a diverse range of skills and interests.

Running head: English
English
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Case Summary and Presenting problems of Dr. Gregory House
Client History
The present case summary is about the fictional character Gregory House, from the
television show ‘House, M. D.’. Gregory House is the head of the diagnostic department at the
Princeton-Plainsboro Clinic. He always leads a team of diagnosticians, as he is the head of the
Diagnostic Medicine department in the ‘Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital’ at Princeton in
New Jersey.
Gregory House is annoyed with his routine work at the Princeton-Plainsboro as it entails
a string of simple diagnoses, and only another investigation can allay his boredom. He treats
people with a fair amount of cynicism, and amazes patients with his eccentric and witty manner
of communication. He is cynical towards his patients and is often harsh in his statements. He can
surprise anyone with a quick and accurate diagnosis of not only the disease of that person, but
can also the reveal the circumstances of the personal life of that person. Although House himself
is very self-contained, he likes to test people and observe their reactions. The patients and
colleagues of Dr. House also influence and shape the character of House. Dr. House is compelled
to walk with a cane after a surgery on the quadriceps muscle of his right thigh. He often uses it to
justify his behavior or his bad mood as well as his dependence on Vicodin that soothes his
chronic leg pains. In addition, House uses methadone and LSD. Judging by some signs, it can be
said that his pains are psychosomatic in nature. Before his leg injury, House played sports.
Gregory House is a polyglot. He demonstrates knowledge of Mandarin Chinese, Hindi and
Spanish. People around him are convinced that House can speak any language. He is a real music

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lover and plays not only the piano but guitar and the harmonica as well, and has great knowledge
about music.
The diagnostic approaches that are shown on the show ‘House, M. D.’ and the attitude of
Dr. Gregory House are both unorthodox in nature (Lapostolle et al., 2013). The character of Dr.
Gregory House has always garnered some positive reviews that have increased the popularity of
the show in various ways. Dr. House has been shown as a person who lacks sympathy for his
patients. House loves his mother but hates his father completely for some reason (Witzel, Koch
& Kaminski, 2017).
Presenting Problems
The client is seeking counseling in order to address and cure the problem of substance
abuse. House’s substance of choice is Vicodin, which is an opioid painkiller. Behavioral therapy
is suggested to address his problem (Carroll & Onken, 2005) and a cognitive and skill-training
approach will probably be more useful in this case. As House often uses drug recreationally and
the pain in his leg is only used as a justification, it is necessary to help him in developing skills
that will help House to foster abstinence and solve the recurring problems. The same approach
can be used to help him deal with his personal problems connected to relationships with other
people. In the following sections, a plethora of important issues regarding his life would be
discussed.

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Personal functioning
If Dr. House is interested in something, he will not rest until he reaches his goal. The
main motivator of his actions is the desire to avoid boredom, to spark interest and curiosity, and
the search for truth. The fact that he is truly a leader is confirmed in an episode about aircraft
hysteria. Only a man of authority by nature, with the power to subjugate others could command
hundreds of people who fell into panic. Moreover, it is important to note that House did not have
to try hard for it. He got up and commanded and people followed him.
Dr. Gregory House has been facing some serious problems of depression and substance
abuse disorder. The connection between substance abuse and mental illness is immense. It has
been regarded as a mental illness and Dr. House has been suffering from it for a very long time
(Witzel, Koch & Kaminski, 2017). Depression also occurs very frequently among people who
have a problem of substance abuse. Dr. House is often seen to drink or abuse drugs so that he can
escape from despair and the feelings of guilt. Substance like alcohol may increase the level of
depression as it works as a depressant in the body of the user.
Relationships
The father of Dr. House served as a military pilot, and his mother was a homemaker.
Because of the nature of the work of his father that involved constant travels, Dr. House spent his
childhood in Japan and Egypt. House had a difficult relationship with his father, whom he simply
abhors, but whom he resembles. His father was always quick to punish him. From one of the
series, we learn that in childhood, House was on the receiving end from his father, and that his
father was biased towards everything and was “brutally honest” - just like House is now.

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After the death of his father, House, after conducting a test, finds out that he was not his
own father, although he had first suggested it at 12 years of age. The biological father of Dr.
House was a Unitarian priest. When House was fourteen years old, he brought his friend to a
Japanese hospital, where he met with a member of the ‘untouchable’ caste, who worked as a
cleaner at the hospital. Despite the disgust that the doctors felt towards the cleaner, they all
listened to his opinion, because of his outstanding knowledge in the field of medicine. That is the
moment when according to House, he decided to become a doctor.
Dr. Gregory House has a plethora of problems in his relationships as well. He believes
that his father has an “insane moral compass” and that is the reason why he hates or abhors his
father. Before he took up medicine as his profession, he had thought of doing research on the
dark matter and do a PhD in Physics. In one instance, Gregory House said that his parents left
him with his grandmother who abused and punished him (Hirt et al., 2013). However, Dr. House
later confessed that his father only abused him. Before the show began, he was in a relationship
with Stacy Warner who was a constitutional lawyer. Some medical complexities created some
rifts between Stacy and Dr. House and afterwards Stacy left Dr. House.
Occupational Relationships
Some spiritual health complexities had been seen in the life of Gregory House. Later Dr.
House got addicted to alcohol and this had a detrimental effect on his professional career to a
certain extent (Gelfand & Cleveland, 2013). Dr. House was conversant in several languages like
English, Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Mandarin etc, which made him an effective communicator
and he was able to communicate with his patients from different cultural backgrounds.

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REFERENCES:
Carroll, K., &Onken, L. (2005). Behavioral Therapies for Drug Abuse. American Journal of
Psychiatry, 162(8), 1452-1460. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.162.8.1452
Gelfand, M. S., & Cleveland, K. O. (2013). Family outbreak of psittacosis with an exhumation-
based diagnosis: following in the footsteps of Dr. House. The American journal of the
medical sciences, 345(3), 252-253.
Hirt, C., Wong, K., Erichsen, S., & White, J. S. (2013). Medical dramas on television: a brief
guide for educators. Medical teacher, 35(3), 237-242.
Lapostolle, F., Montois, S., Alhéritière, A., De Stefano, C., Le Toumelin, P., & Adnet, F. (2013).
Dr House, TV, and Reality…. The American journal of medicine, 126(2), 171-173.
McWilliams, N. (2011). Psychoanalytic diagnosis. New York: The Guilford Press.
Witzel, K., Koch, H. J., & Kaminski, C. (2017). Impact of medical TV shows on preprocedural
fear of surgical in-house patients. European Surgical Research, 58(3-4), 121-127.