Psychological explanation of schizophrenia Flashcards
What does the schizophrenogenic mother theory propose about the causes of schizophrenia?
The theory proposes that a cold, rejecting, and controlling mother creates a family environment characterized by tension and secrecy, which can lead to distrust, paranoid delusions, and eventually schizophrenia.
What traits characterize the “schizophrenogenic mother”?
The schizophrenogenic mother is characterized by being cold, rejecting, and controlling, which creates a family atmosphere of tension and secrecy.
How is the concept of the schizophrenogenic mother related to the development of schizophrenia?
The cold and controlling nature of the schizophrenogenic mother leads to a climate of distrust in the child, which may develop into paranoid delusions and contribute to the onset of schizophrenia.
What is the double bind explanation of schizophrenia?
This is when a child receives mixed messages, feels trapped in doing the wrong thing, and is punished by withdrawal of love. This leads to confusion, disorganised thinking, and the development of paranoid delusions.
What does Bateson et al. (1971) mean when they say the double-bind situation is a “risk factor”?
Bateson emphasizes that the double-bind theory is a risk factor, meaning it makes it more likely that a person will develop schizophrenia, but it is not a definitive cause for all cases of the disorder.
What is “expressed emotion” (EE) in relation to schizophrenia?
Expressed emotion (EE) refers to the level of emotion, especially negative emotion, expressed by caregivers towards a person with schizophrenia, which can affect the patient’s mental health.
What are the key features of expressed emotion (EE)?
Key features of expressed emotion include verbal criticism, hostility, and emotional over-involvement (e.g., needless self-sacrifice).
How does high expressed emotion (EE) affect patients with schizophrenia?
High levels of EE in caregivers are a significant source of stress for patients with schizophrenia, contributing to relapse and potentially triggering the onset of the disorder in vulnerable individuals.
What is meta-representation in the context of schizophrenia?
Meta-representation is the cognitive ability to reflect on our own thoughts and behaviors, allowing us to understand our intentions, goals, and interpret others’ actions.
What happens when there is dysfunction in meta-representation?
Dysfunction in meta-representation disrupts our ability to recognize our own actions and thoughts, leading to symptoms like hallucinations (e.g., voices) and delusions (e.g., thought insertion, where thoughts are believed to be placed in the mind by others).
How does meta-representation dysfunction explain auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia?
Dysfunction in meta-representation makes it difficult for individuals to distinguish their own thoughts from external influences, leading to the experience of hearing voices that they cannot attribute to themselves.
What is central control in relation to schizophrenia?
Central control is the ability to suppress automatic responses and perform deliberate actions. Dysfunction in this area leads to disorganized speech and thought disorders.
How does dysfunction of central control contribute to thought disorder in schizophrenia?
When central control is impaired, individuals cannot suppress automatic thoughts and speech that are triggered by other thoughts, leading to disorganized speech and incoherent thinking.
What is “derailment of thoughts” in schizophrenia?
Derailment of thoughts refers to when each word or idea triggers automatic associations that the individual cannot suppress, leading to fragmented, disconnected, and incoherent thinking or speech.
How does central control dysfunction affect communication in schizophrenia?
Due to dysfunction in central control, individuals with schizophrenia may struggle to stay focused on the topic of conversation and may insert unrelated words or phrases into their speech, making communication difficult. Speech can be jumbled and incoherent, where words or phrases are randomly mixed without logical connection. This is sometimes referred to as a ‘word salad’.
What is a strength of the family dysfunction explanation of schizophrenia? (Read et al)
A strength is that it is supported by research, such as Read et al. (2005), who found that a high percentage of patients with schizophrenia had a history of child abuse. 69% of adult women with schizophrenia had a history of childhood abuse (physical or sexual), and 59% of men with schizophrenia had a similar history. This suggests that childhood trauma could be a cause of schizophrenia.
What is a strength of the family dysfunction explanation of schizophrenia? (Berry et al)
Berry et al. (2008) found that adults with insecure attachments to their primary carer are more likely to have schizophrenia. This suggests that the insecure attachment with a parental figure was a cause of schizophrenia.
What is a limitation of research into the family dysfunction explanation of schizophrenia?
A limitation is that much of the evidence is retrospective, meaning that patients’ recall of childhood experiences may be distorted by their schizophrenia, affecting the validity of the data. Retrospective data may lack validity because patients may have a distorted memory of their childhood experiences due to the impact of their schizophrenia.
What is a limitation with the concept of the “schizophrenogenic mother”?
The theory of the schizophrenogenic mother has been criticized for being unscientific and for historically leading to the blaming of parents, which caused further emotional harm to families already dealing with the illness.
What is a strength of the cognitive explanation for schizophrenia?
A strength is the evidence supporting dysfunctional information processing. Studies like Stirling et al. (2006) show that schizophrenia sufferers process information differently, such as struggling to suppress automatic responses during tasks. Stirling et al. found that patients with schizophrenia took over twice as long as controls to name ink colours in the Stroop Test, supporting the idea of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia.
What is a limitation of the cognitive explanation for schizophrenia?
A limitation is that it does not explain the origins of schizophrenia. While it explains the cognitive symptoms, it does not address the origins of the disorder. The direction of causality is unclear—it’s uncertain whether cognitive factors cause schizophrenia or if abnormal cognition is a result of the underlying neural and biological changes associated with the disorder.
