psychological explanations for schizophrenia evaluation Flashcards
there is support for family dysfunction
there is evidence to suggest family relationships in childhood are associated with increased risk of schizophrenia in adulthood e.g. Read et al and Berry et al (2009)
therefore, there is a large body of evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia
what did Read et al study show
Read et al reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of adult women inpatients with schizophrenia diagnosis had a histor of physical, sexual abuse in childhood
in men this value is 59%
what did Berry et al concluded
adults with insecure attachment to primary carer are more likely to have schizophrenia
what is the weakness of the evidence
the information about childhood experience was gathered after the development of symptoms, and the schizophrenia may have distorted patients recall of childhood experiences
This creates a serious problem of validity
A much smaller number of studies (Tienari et al) experiences to see if the childhood experiences predicted any characteristics.
There is a prospective evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia but not huge amount and results have been inconsistent
weak evidence for family - based explanation
there is plenty of evidence supporting the broad principle that poor childhood experiences in the family are associated with adult schizophrenia,however, there is almost none to support the importance of the schizophrengenic mother and double bind
both these theories are based on clinical observation of patients and early evidence involved assessing the personality of the mothers of patients for “crazy - making characteristics” - a crude technique for schizophrenia
what is another issue with the schizophrengenic mother and double - bind theory
another problem with dysfunctional family explanations for schizophrenia is that they lead to parent - blaming
parents can undergo trauma by recieving the blame for the condition Therefore, leading to the decline of the schizophrenic mother and double- bind theories as parents no longer tolerates them
strong evidence for dysfunctional information processing
there is strong support for the idea that info is processed differently in the mind of the person with schizophrenia
what is a study that provides information for dysfunctional information processing
In one study:
Stirling et al (2006) compared 30 people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with 18 controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the Stroop test
In line with Frith’s theory of central control dysfunction, people with schizophrenia took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group
what does the mass amount of evidence for dysfunctional information processing show
there is a mass amount of evidence like this to show that information processing is different in the mind of a person with schizophrenia, there is a problem with cognitive explanations for schizophrenia.
The links between symptoms and faulty cognition are clear; however, this does not tell us anything about the origins of those cognitions or of schizophrenia
Cognitive theories can explain the proximal causes of schizophrenia, i.e. what causes current symptoms but not the distal causes, i.e. the origins of the conditions
what is the Stroop test
the Stroop Test is a test where participants have to name the ink colours of words, suppressing the impulse to read the words in order to do this task
evidence for biological factors is not adequately considered
in pure forms, psychological explanations (particularly family dysfunction) for schizophrenia can be hard to reconcile with biological explanations.
It could be that both biological and psychological factors can separately produce the same symptoms, which raises the question of whether both outcomes are really schizophrenia.
Alternatively, we can view this in terms of the diathesis-stress model where the diathesis may be biological
direction of causality
There is a mass amount of information concerning abnormal cognitions as well as a mass of information about abnormal biology in schizophrenia
However, it remains unclear what causes what, including cognitive factors are a result of the neural correlates and abnormal neurotransmitter levels seen in schizophrenia
