Dysfunctional families Flashcards
What did Bateson and colleagues propose in relation to symptoms of schizophrenia and communication difficulties?
The symptoms seen in individuals with schizophrenia were the result of communication difficulties within the family, especially between parents and their children.
How may conflicting messages explain the development of schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia may develop where a child is repeatedly exposed to social interactions where there are two conflicting messages.
Also where the child does not have the opportunity to ignore them or to adequately respond to them.
What do communication contradictors incapacitate children ability to do?
Respond effectively.
This is because the verbal and nonverbal messages cancel each other out.
The child is reliant on the parent who is delivering conflicting messages. What does this prevent the child from doing?
Meta communicating.
They cannot comment on the fact that contradictory messages have been used.
What is metacommunication?
Communication about communication.
What did Bateson make clear about conflicting messages and their link to schizophrenia?
Conflicting messages were not the main type of communication in the family of schizophrenia sufferers.
Conflicting messages are not the only factor in developing schizophrenia, just a risk factor.
According to Bateson, what could long-term exposure to communication contradictions lead to?
The child learns to perceive the world in terms of contradictory input from their environment.
They are unable to discriminate between the contradictory messages as they have internalised the double bind situation.
According to Bateson, if a child internalises the double bind situation, what could this lead to?
The manifestation of symptoms of schizophrenia such as hallucinations and delusions, as a means of escaping the contradictory demands of the double bind situation.
In 1956, what was happening in relation to antipsychotics, schizophrenia and hospital?
The antipsychotic drug chlorpromazine was being widely used to treat schizophrenia.
After being stabilised with medication in hospital, patients were released.
However, many were soon readmitted due to a relapse of symptoms.
What did Brown study?
156 men with schizophrenia after they had been discharged.
What did Brown find?
Relapse was strongly connected with the type of home the men were discharged to.
Those men discharged to stay with their parents or wives were more likely to relapse than men who lived in lodgings or with siblings.
Later, Brown conducted interviews with the wives and parents.
He found a relationship between the amount of expressed emotion and the likelihood of relapse.
According to Brown, what differences in critical comments were then in people with high EE and low EE?
High EE caregivers = “they are so lazy, they don’t help around the house”.
Low EE caregivers = tended to acknowledge these behaviours were due to their illness.
According to Brown what was noted as being present in high EE caregivers? What was this though to be a result of?
Hostility.
Thought to be a result of unmanageable anger and irritation.
What does emotional over-involvement manifest itself in? What type of caregiver was this evident in during Brown’s research?
High levels of both happiness and sadness, excessive self-sacrifice and extreme overprotective behaviour of the caregiver toward the individual with schizophrenia.
This was evident in the parent caregivers as they frequently reported feeling guilty for their child’s illness and their guilt led them to excessive reparative efforts.
How was warmth measured in Brown’s research? What type of caregiver was warmth evident in?
Measured by vocal qualities, smiling and empathy expressed when the caregiver was talking about the individual with schizophrenia.
Warmth was generally evident in low EE caregivers.
In Brown’s research, what was positive regard? What type of caregiver was this evident in?
Positive regard = number of reinforcing statements in which the caregiver expresses support and appreciation of the individual with schizophrenia.
This was lacking in low EE caregivers.
What did Liem find?
The communications offered in a structured task by the parents of 11 sons with schizophrenia were no more disordered than the communications offered by parents of 11 sons who did not have schizophrenia.
Although many studies have highlighted communication difficulties in the families of individuals with schizophrenia, what have some studies not found?
A significant difference in the quality of communications within families that have a member with schizophrenia.
What did Liem suggest about research that has identified communication difficulties in families of individuals with schizophrenia? What does this suggest about the double bind theory?
The studies may actually just be detecting parents having to adapt their communication styles when dealing with a schizophrenic child.
Suggests that the communication difficulties the double bind theory are based on are an effect rather than the cause of schizophrenia.
What did Koopmans suggest?
Incidental variations in family interactions that would normally have had little effect, may, at times of family disruption, lead to double bind communications.
What does Koopman’s point suggest?
This may offer a reasonable explanation for how the double bind communications could be established in a family.
However, there is a little empirical evidence to support this idea.
What does Vaughn and Leff’s research offer support for?
The role of expressed emotion in relapse rates.
What did Vaughn and Leff find?
53% of those individuals with schizophrenia who had a high EE relative relapsed within nine months.
Only 12% of those with low EE relatives relapsed.
Not all research has supported EE as a predictor of relapse of schizophrenia. What is one study that doesn’t support?
McCreadie and Phillips.
