Psychological Explanations Flashcards
What are the two psychological explanations of SCH?
- Family dysfunction
- cognitive explanation - dysfunctional thought processing
What is Family Dysfunction
- These explanations emphasise family-orientated theories of the disorder that emphasise the importance of upbringing and in particular trauma playing a role in the development of schizophrenia
- stress the importance of how maladaptive family relationships and poor communication within the household contribute to develop of SCH
What are the three family problems we look at?
- Schizophrenogenic mother
- Double-bind Hypothesis
- High Expressed emotion
What is the difference between Schizophrenogenic mother + Double bind and High Expressed Emotion
HEE is a cause of relapse and why symptoms come back whereas the other two are both an acquisition -> experiences happen in childhood and then symptoms show in adulthood
What is a Schizophrenogenic mother?
Mother figure conveyed as cold, domineering and rejecting towards the child, however she is also overprotective and overbearing. This sets up lines of faulty communication between her and the child. This can create excessive stress which can trigger psychotic thinking as the child tries to make sense of the toxic home environment and this can develop into sch in adulthood
What is the double-bind hypothesis
Term used to describe the confusing and contradictory situations that children can find themselves in. It can be a reflected in symptoms like disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions. Double bind is a ‘communication dilemma’ that comes from a conflict between contradictory mixed messages. So it doesn’t matter what you do, because any choice you make will be wrong.
What is High Expressed Emotion?
A family communication style that involves criticism, hostility and emotional over-involvement. This helps maintain the disorder rather than cause it. Schizophrenics returning to such a family were more likely to relapse into the disorder than those returning to a family low in EE. The rate of relapse was particularly high if return to HEE family coupled with no medication.
Summarise evaluations of dysfunctional families
- Evidence to support - Lidz
- Cause and effect issues - disorder may lead to parental overprotectiveness
- Alternative explanations - Biological - More Scientific
- Evidence to show return to HEE effects relapse - Butzlaff and Hooley
- Causes further problems to sufferer and families
- Practical applications - family therapy
Summarise Lidz (1965)
Looked at case of 50 sch patients and investigated their family backgrounds. 90% were found to have seriously disturbed families. 60% had 1 or more parents with a personality disorder. Parental marriages were characterised by 1 dominant and 1 submissive parent and parents made considerable emotional demands
Summarise Butzlaff and Hooley (1998)
Completed a meta-analysis of 26 studies and found that when patients suffering with schizophrenia returned to family’s with HEE they experienced more than twice the rate of relapse of Schizophrenia symptoms
What is the cognitive explanation / dysfunctional thought processing
Emphasises role of ‘faulty information processing’, claims many SCH patients have dysfunctional thought processing. Symptoms of SCH are due to specific “cognitive deficits”. Sufferers have problems with a high-level cognitive process called meta-representation, this is the ability to reflect upon thoughts, behaviours and feelings and gives us the sense of self-awareness
What are the three cognitive issues that we look at?
- Dysfunction in the Central Monitoring System (hallucinations)
- Dysfunction within the supervisory attention system (negative symptoms e.g. poverty of speech)
- Dysfunction within insight / egocentric bias (delusions)
What is dysfunction in the central monitoring system
- Typically this process labels and recognises actions and thoughts and thoughts as being ‘done by me’ or ‘mine’
- a malfunction within the CMS could explain the positive symptoms hallucinations and delusions
- e.g. faults with misattributions of our inner speech / articulatory control process to external sources such as hearing voices
What is dysfunction within the supervisory attention system
- typically this process is responsible for generating self-initiated actions so if faulty can affect being active
- a malfunction can lead to negative symptoms e.g. speech poverty, flat affect and avolition
- e.g. not responding to environmental stimuli with appropriate emotions because of a faulty SAS hence limits interaction
What is dysfunction within insight / egocentric bias
- typically we can all see we are not a central component to all events and usually grow out of egocentric bias as we mature
- egocentric bias is the idea that everything relates to you specifically, so you can jump to false conclusions about what you process from input around you
- resistant to consider possible, feasible alternatives to what you think
- e.g. muffled voices = SCH perceive this as peoples criticisms
- e.g. flashes of light = SCH perceive this as signals from God - delusions of grandeur
