6.3: Psychological explanations for schizophrenia

Question 1

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks)

Answer 1

Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control

Question 2

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
What does family dysfunction include?

Answer 2

Family dysfunction includes:

1. The schizophrenogenic mother
2. Double-bind theory
3. Expressed emotion

Question 3

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.

Answer 3

Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive

Question 4

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.

Answer 4

Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia

Question 5

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.

Answer 5

High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled

Question 6

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

What does one cognitive explanation for schizophrenia suggest?

Answer 6

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms

Question 7

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
Example

Answer 7

For example:

1. Reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms
2. Reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations

Question 8

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.

Answer 8

Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control

Question 9

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation

Answer 9

Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others

Question 10

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.

Answer 10

Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others)

Question 11

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control

Answer 11

Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead

Question 12

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
What could disorganised speech and thought disorder result from?

Answer 12

Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts

Question 13

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
Example

Answer 13

For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these

Question 14

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

First AO3 PEEL paragraph

Answer 14

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia

Question 15

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
Example

Answer 15

For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood

Question 16

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
Who is this further supported by?

Answer 16

This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia

Question 17

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
What is there thus?

Answer 17

There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia

Question 18

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

Second AO3 PEEL paragraph

Answer 18

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences

Question 19

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
What does this do?

Answer 19

This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded

Question 20

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this,

Answer 20

As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness

Question 21

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However,

Answer 21

However, family dysfunction is important

Question 22

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
Why is this?

Answer 22

This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only

Question 23

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
What does this do?

Answer 23

This:

1. Shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition
2. Perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia

Question 24

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, what do some argue?

Answer 24

Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia

Question 25

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
What does this illustrate?

Answer 25

This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia

Question 26

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

Third AO3 PEEL paragraph

Answer 26

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer

Question 27

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
Example

Answer 27

For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task

Question 28

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction,

Answer 28

In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group

Question 29

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, why is there an issue with cognitive explanations of schizophrenia?

Answer 29

However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia

Question 30

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia.
Therefore,

Answer 30

Therefore, cognitive explanations have limited usefulness, due to the fact that they can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms), but not the distal causes (the origins of the condition)

Question 31

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia.
Therefore, cognitive explanations have limited usefulness, due to the fact that they can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms), but not the distal causes (the origins of the condition).

Fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph

Answer 31

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that psychological explanations of schizophrenia (family dysfunction and cognitive explanations) have positive real world application, because they have led to psychological therapies, such as family therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy

Question 32

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia.
Therefore, cognitive explanations have limited usefulness, due to the fact that they can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms), but not the distal causes (the origins of the condition).

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that psychological explanations of schizophrenia (family dysfunction and cognitive explanations) have positive real world application, because they have led to psychological therapies, such as family therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.
How does this support free will?

Answer 32

This supports free will, because it is therefore believed that you can make yourself better and relieve your suffering

Question 33

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia.
Therefore, cognitive explanations have limited usefulness, due to the fact that they can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms), but not the distal causes (the origins of the condition).

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that psychological explanations of schizophrenia (family dysfunction and cognitive explanations) have positive real world application, because they have led to psychological therapies, such as family therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.
This supports free will, because it is therefore believed that you can make yourself better and relieve your suffering, but

Answer 33

This supports free will, because it is therefore believed that you can make yourself better and relieve your suffering, but psychological explanations are reductionist, because they only look at psychological factors and ignore the links to biology in explaining schizophrenia

Question 34

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia.
Therefore, cognitive explanations have limited usefulness, due to the fact that they can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms), but not the distal causes (the origins of the condition).

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that psychological explanations of schizophrenia (family dysfunction and cognitive explanations) have positive real world application, because they have led to psychological therapies, such as family therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.
This supports free will, because it is therefore believed that you can make yourself better and relieve your suffering, but psychological explanations are reductionist, because they only look at psychological factors and ignore the links to biology in explaining schizophrenia, for example what?

Answer 34

This supports free will, because it is therefore believed that you can make yourself better and relieve your suffering, but psychological explanations are reductionist, because they only look at psychological factors and ignore the links to biology in explaining schizophrenia, for example how Juckel et al. found lower levels of activity in the ventral striatum in schizophrenia sufferers that than those in controls

Question 35

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia.
Therefore, cognitive explanations have limited usefulness, due to the fact that they can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms), but not the distal causes (the origins of the condition).

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that psychological explanations of schizophrenia (family dysfunction and cognitive explanations) have positive real world application, because they have led to psychological therapies, such as family therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.
This supports free will, because it is therefore believed that you can make yourself better and relieve your suffering, but psychological explanations are reductionist, because they only look at psychological factors and ignore the links to biology in explaining schizophrenia, for example how Juckel et al. found lower levels of activity in the ventral striatum in schizophrenia sufferers that than those in controls.
What does this show?

Answer 35

This shows that schizophrenia is not purely psychological

Question 36

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia.
Therefore, cognitive explanations have limited usefulness, due to the fact that they can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms), but not the distal causes (the origins of the condition).

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that psychological explanations of schizophrenia (family dysfunction and cognitive explanations) have positive real world application, because they have led to psychological therapies, such as family therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.
This supports free will, because it is therefore believed that you can make yourself better and relieve your suffering, but psychological explanations are reductionist, because they only look at psychological factors and ignore the links to biology in explaining schizophrenia, for example how Juckel et al. found lower levels of activity in the ventral striatum in schizophrenia sufferers that than those in controls.
This shows that schizophrenia is not purely psychological.
Thus, modern psychologists

Answer 36

Thus, modern psychologists look at the diathesis-stress model

Question 37

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia.
Therefore, cognitive explanations have limited usefulness, due to the fact that they can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms), but not the distal causes (the origins of the condition).

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that psychological explanations of schizophrenia (family dysfunction and cognitive explanations) have positive real world application, because they have led to psychological therapies, such as family therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.
This supports free will, because it is therefore believed that you can make yourself better and relieve your suffering, but psychological explanations are reductionist, because they only look at psychological factors and ignore the links to biology in explaining schizophrenia, for example how Juckel et al. found lower levels of activity in the ventral striatum in schizophrenia sufferers that than those in controls.
This shows that schizophrenia is not purely psychological.
Thus, modern psychologists look at the diathesis-stress model, which is a better explanation, why?

Answer 37

Thus, modern psychologists look at the diathesis-stress model, which is a better explanation, because it is less reductionist, as biological factors are accounted for, since the diathesis-stress model argues that the cause of schizophrenia may be biology, but it is triggered by stress

Question 38

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia.
Therefore, cognitive explanations have limited usefulness, due to the fact that they can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms), but not the distal causes (the origins of the condition).

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that psychological explanations of schizophrenia (family dysfunction and cognitive explanations) have positive real world application, because they have led to psychological therapies, such as family therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.
This supports free will, because it is therefore believed that you can make yourself better and relieve your suffering, but psychological explanations are reductionist, because they only look at psychological factors and ignore the links to biology in explaining schizophrenia, for example how Juckel et al. found lower levels of activity in the ventral striatum in schizophrenia sufferers that than those in controls.
This shows that schizophrenia is not purely psychological.
Thus, modern psychologists look at the diathesis-stress model, which is a better explanation, because it is less reductionist, as biological factors are accounted for, since the diathesis-stress model argues that the cause of schizophrenia may be biology, but it is triggered by stress.
Where does further support from the interactionist perspective come from?

Answer 38

Further support for the interactionist perspective comes from how the usual course of treatment for schizophrenia sufferers involves a combination of biological and psychological therapies

Question 39

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia.
Therefore, cognitive explanations have limited usefulness, due to the fact that they can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms), but not the distal causes (the origins of the condition).

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that psychological explanations of schizophrenia (family dysfunction and cognitive explanations) have positive real world application, because they have led to psychological therapies, such as family therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.
This supports free will, because it is therefore believed that you can make yourself better and relieve your suffering, but psychological explanations are reductionist, because they only look at psychological factors and ignore the links to biology in explaining schizophrenia, for example how Juckel et al. found lower levels of activity in the ventral striatum in schizophrenia sufferers that than those in controls.
This shows that schizophrenia is not purely psychological.
Thus, modern psychologists look at the diathesis-stress model, which is a better explanation, because it is less reductionist, as biological factors are accounted for, since the diathesis-stress model argues that the cause of schizophrenia may be biology, but it is triggered by stress.
Further support for the interactionist perspective comes from how the usual course of treatment for schizophrenia sufferers involves a combination of biological and psychological therapies.
Example

Answer 39

For example, they are given antipsychotics first so that they will have enough motivation to later attend cognitive behavioural therapy sessions

Question 40

Describe and evaluate/discuss psychological theories of schizophrenia (16 marks).
Family dysfunction is that schizophrenia is due to family experiences of conflict, communication problems, criticism and control.
Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory and expressed emotion.
Psychodynamic theorists recognised that a schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mother was typically cold, controlling and rejecting and this leads to excessive stress, which triggers psychotic thinking.
The father in such families is often passive.
Double-bind communication (Bateson et al., 1972) is that a child receives mixed messages and cannot do the right thing and this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia.
High expressed emotion is where the family shows exaggerated involvement, control and criticism, which increases the likelihood of relapse in schizophrenia patients (Kavanagh, 1992).
In fact, according to Butzlaff and Hooley (1998), the relapse rate is doubled.

One cognitive explanation for schizophrenia argues that schizophrenia is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing and we can see this in many of its symptoms.
For example, reduced processing of information in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations.
Frith et al. (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms - metarepresentation and central control.
Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour, so this allows us insight into our own intentions and goals and it also allows us to interpret the actions of others.
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise and our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion (the experience of having thoughts projected into the mind by others).
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
For example, sufferers with schizophrenia tend to experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences (alogia), because each word triggers associations and the patient cannot suppress automatic responses to these.

The first AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research support for family dysfunction explanation for schizophrenia.
For example, Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients and 59% of adult men in-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood.
This is further supported by Berry et al. (2008), who found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are also more likely to have schizophrenia.
There is thus a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia, implying that it is a valid explanation of schizophrenia.

The second AO3 PEEL paragraph is that However, most of this evidence has a shared weakness that the information about childhood experiences was retrospective and gathered after the development of symptoms, so the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences.
This creates a serious issue of validity, as it invalidates the research and therefore suggests that the family dysfunction explanation is not well-founded.
As well as this, much of the research does not show a specific link to schizophrenia, limiting its usefulness.
However, family dysfunction is important.
This is because Tienari, using prospective methods (a much more valid method than Read et al.’s research) found that a child-rearing style characterised by high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia, but for the children with a high genetic risk only.
This shows the importance of communication, but only if the individual has a genetic predisposition, and perhaps suggests that family dysfunction is a trigger for schizophrenia.
Despite this, some argue that family dysfunction is not a cause of schizophrenia, but that it is probably the result of living with someone with schizophrenia.
This illustrates how the family dysfunction explanation is not valid, as it is not a complete explanation for schizophrenia.

The third AO3 PEEL paragraph is that there is research to support Frith’s cognitive explanation and the idea that information is processed differently in the mind of the schizophrenia sufferer.
For example, Stirling et al. (2006) compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop Test, in which participants have to name the ink colours of colour words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task.
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
However, despite this, there is an issue with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia, because links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear, but this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia.
Therefore, cognitive explanations have limited usefulness, due to the fact that they can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia (what causes current symptoms), but not the distal causes (the origins of the condition).

The fourth AO3 PEEL paragraph is that psychological explanations of schizophrenia (family dysfunction and cognitive explanations) have positive real world application, because they have led to psychological therapies, such as family therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.
This supports free will, because it is therefore believed that you can make yourself better and relieve your suffering, but psychological explanations are reductionist, because they only look at psychological factors and ignore the links to biology in explaining schizophrenia, for example how Juckel et al. found lower levels of activity in the ventral striatum in schizophrenia sufferers that than those in controls.
This shows that schizophrenia is not purely psychological.
Thus, modern psychologists look at the diathesis-stress model, which is a better explanation, because it is less reductionist, as biological factors are accounted for, since the diathesis-stress model argues that the cause of schizophrenia may be biology, but it is triggered by stress.
Further support for the interactionist perspective comes from how the usual course of treatment for schizophrenia sufferers involves a combination of biological and psychological therapies.
For example, they are given antipsychotics first so that they will have enough motivation to later attend cognitive behavioural therapy sessions.
What does this do?

Answer 40

This:

1. Shows the importance of adopting an interactionist approach in the explanation and treatment of schizophrenia
2. Thus invalidates psychological explanations of schizophrenia