A2 SCHIZOPHRENIA - INTERACTIONIST APPROACH

Question 1

Describe the interactionist approach to sch

Answer 1

Also known as the biosocial approach; acknowledges biological, psychological and social factors in dev of sch

Biological factors include genetic vulnerability, neurochemical and neurological abnormality
Psychological factors include life events and daily hassles

Interactionist approach works on the diathesis-stress model

Question 2

Describe the old view of diathesis stress

Answer 2

Meehl said diathesis is entirely genetic and that there was a single “schizogene”; having the gene caused the schizotypic personality, one characteristic of which was the vulnerability to stress

According to Meehl’s model, if you didn’t have the schizogene, no amount of stress could ever trigger sch, but if you did have it, then chronic stress (usually in childhood/adolescence, and in particular the schizophrenogenic mother) could trigger sch

Question 3

Describe the new view of diathesis

Answer 3

Ripke et al (2014) showed that there’s no single schizogene, but that sch is polygenic

Ingram and Luxon (2005) showed diathesis can be psychological or biological; trauma as a child can act as diathesis and the stress comes later in life

Read et al (2001) proposed a developmental model; severe, ealry childhood trauma (e.g. child abuse) can overactivate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system, which makes you more vulnerable to stress later on

Question 4

Describe the new view of stress

Answer 4

Stress doesn’t have to be psychological; it’s just anything that can trigger sch in vulnerable ppl; put forward by Houston et al (2008), e.g. cannabis use can increase chance of developing sch by up to 7 times as it interferes w/ the dopamine system. There are lots of vulnerability factors; you don’t just dev sch after using cannabis

Question 5

Describe treatment using the interactionist approach

Answer 5

Says we should use bio and psychological treatments; normally a combo of drugs and CBT; Turkington et al (2006) point out that you can still believe in bio causes of sch and provide psychological treatments, but it requires the adoption of the interactionist approach.

Combo of drugs + CBT is becoming more and more common here in UK, but there’s always been a bigger conflict bet bio and psychological approaches in the US, so its more common to just have drugs. It’s very uncommon to treat sch w/ just psychological treatments; they almost always come with drugs.

Question 6

Evaluate the interactionist approach

Answer 6

(+) Tienari et al (2004) studied adopted kids; some from 19000 Finnish biological mothers w/ sch and others from bio mums w/out sch. The new adoptive parents were assessed on child rearing style, and kids who were adopted from a sch mother and received harsh parenting from new mum had high rates of sch dev, but those who received harsh parenting from adoptive parents but had non-sch bio mothers weren’t affected; shows diathesis-stress model
(+) Tarrier et al (2004) randomly allocated 315 sch patients to 1 of 3 conditions; C1 (drugs + CBT), C2 (drugs + supprotive counselling) and C3 (drugs alone). C1 and C2 showed lower symptom rates than C3; diathesis-stress model
(-) Ethical issues of exposing some to better treatment than others, especially when there’s an expectancy that a combo would work better
(-) Treatment-causation fallacy; just because treatments work doesn’t mean they’re the cause
(-) We still don’t fully understand the mechanisms by which the symptoms of sch appear, and how exactly diathesis and stress produce them.