Psychological explanations for schizophrenia

Question 1

Family dysfunction

Answer 1

abnormal processes within a family such as poor family communication, cold parenting and high levels of expressed emotion. These may be risk factors for both the development and maintenance of schizophrenia

Question 2

The Schizophrenogenic mother

Answer 2

FROMM-REICHMANN
psychodynamic explanation for schizophrenia
schizophrenogenic mother is cold, rejecting and controlling, and tends to create a family climate characterised by tension and secrecy. Leads to distrust that later develops into paranoid delusions –> schizophrenia

Question 3

Double-bind theory

Answer 3

BATESON
emphasised the role of communication style within a family
Developing child finds themselves trapped in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing, but receive mixed messages about what this is, and feel unable to comment on the unfairness of this situation or seek clarification.

• ‘get it wrong’ = punished by withdrawal of love –> disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions

Question 4

Expressed emotion and schizophrenia

Answer 4

the level of emotion, in particular negative emotion, expressed towards a patient by their carers

• verbal criticism of the patient
• hostility towards the patient
• emotional over-involvement in the life of the patient

Question 5

Cognitive explanations

Answer 5

focus on mental processes such as thinking, language and attention

reduced processing in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms, whilst reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyro are associated with hallucinations

Question 6

Dysfunctional thought processing

Answer 6

information processing that is not functioning normal and produces undesirable consequences

• Metarepresentation - the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour. This allows us insight into our own intentions and goals. Allows to interpret the actions of others. – dysfunction in metarepresentation disrupts ability to recognise own actions and thoughts as being carries out by ourselves rather than someone else
• Central control - ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead. Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.