psychological explanation for schizophrenia Flashcards
what is one psychological explanation for schizophrenia
family dsyfunction
define family dysfunction
process within a family such as poor family communication. cold parenting and high levels of expressed emotions.
how dose family dysfunction link to schizophrenia
there is a link between living in a dysfunctional family and schizophrenia in childhood/ adulthood.
who proposed The schizophrenogenic mother
Fromm-Reichmann’s (1948) - proposed a psychodynamic explanation for schizophrenia.
what was fromm-reichmanns theory based off of
accounts from her patients’ early experiences of ‘schizophrenogenic mothers’ (mothers who cause schizophrenia).
what traits dose the schizophrenogenic mother have
cold, rejecting and controlling, and create a family climate of tension and secrecy.
what dose the schizophrenic mother lead to
leads to distrust and paranoid delusions and schizophrenia.
what is the double blind theory
agrees that family climate is important but emphasises the role of communication.
who theories the double blind theory
Bateson et al. (1972)
example of double blind theory
child may be regularly trapped in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing, but receive conflicting messages about what counts as wrong.
cannot express their feelings about the unfairness of the situation.
When they ‘get it wrong: child is punished by withdrawal of love leads to disorganised thinking and delusions.
what is the Expressed emotion and schizophrenia.
is the level of emotion expressed towards the schizophrenic patient.
what dose expressed emotions include
VHE
Verbal criticism of the patient.
Hostility towards them.
Emotional over-involvement in their life.
High levels of EE cause stress in the patient: primarily an explanation for relapse in people with schizophrenia.
what dose cognitive explanation focus on
focuses on the role of mental processes.
what is dysfunctional thought processing
information processing that dose not represent reality accurately and produces undesirable consequences
Lower levels of information processing in some areas of the brain suggest that cognition is impaired.
example of dysfunction thinking in relation schizophrenia
reduced processing in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms.
what did Frith et al identify
2 types of dysfunctional thought processing.
metarepresentation and central control dysfunction.
what is metarepresentation
cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour.
dysfunction in the metarepresentation would
disrupts our ability to recognise our thoughts as our own.
lead to the sensation of hearing voices (hallucination) and having thoughts placed in the mind by others (delusions).
what is central control dysfunction
Identified issues with cognitive abilities to cypress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions.
speech poverty could result inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech.
For example: schizophrenics can experience derailment of thoughts and spoken sentences: each word triggers automatic associations that they cannot suppress.
One strength of family dysfunction explanations
there is evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia. Read et al. (2005)
adults with schizophrenia were disproportionately likely to have insecure attachment, particularly Type C or D.
One limitation of family explanations
poor evidence base for any of the explanations.
there is evidence supporting childhood family-based stress associated with adult schizophrenia,
no evidence to support the importance of traditional family-based theories such as the schizophrenogenic mother and double bind.
One strength of cognitive explanations
evidence for dysfunctional thought processing. Stirling et al. (2006)
compared performance on a range of cognitive tasks, including the Stroop task, in people with and without schizophrenia.
