Psychological Explanations for Schizophrenia

Question 1

What is family dysfunction?

Answer 1

Any forms of abnormal processes with a family such as conflict communication problems, cold parenting, criticism, control and high levels of expressed emotions

Question 2

What did Laing believe about schizophrenia?

Answer 2

• Schizophrenia was not a disease
• Schizophrenia was a reslut of social pressures from life
• Schizophrenia was a result of the interactions between people

Question 3

What did Bateson suugest?

Answer 3

DOUBLE BLIND THEORY

Question 4

What does the double blind theory suggest?

Answer 4

that children who frequently receive contradictory messages from their parents are more likely to develop schizophrenia

Question 5

What is an example of the double blind theory?

Answer 5

parents who say they care whilst appearing critical or who express love whilst appearing angry

Question 6

What did Bateson et al believe about schizophrenia?

Answer 6

• It is not a disease

- A result from social pressures from life

Question 7

What did prolonged exposure to such interactions prevent?

Answer 7

the development of an internally coherent construction of reality

Question 8

What is another family varibale associated with schizophrenia?

Answer 8

• Negative emotional climate
  OR
• More generally a high degree of expressed emotion

Question 9

What is expressed emotion?

Answer 9

A family communication sytle that involve criticism, hostility and emotional over-involvement

Question 10

What do researchers argue is the most important thing in maintaining schizophrenia?

Answer 10

A family communication sytle that involve criticism, hostility and emotional over-involvement

Question 11

What is one strength of the double bind explanation?

Answer 11

Comes from empirical support provided by Berger
Finding that schizophrenics reported higher recall of double bind statements by their mothers than non-schizophrenics
However, evidence may not be reliable as patient’s recall may be affected by their schizophrenia. This suggests that there is wider academic credibility for the idea of contradictory messages causing schizophrenia.

Question 12

What are issues with individual differences and expressed emotions?

Answer 12

EE is associated with relapse but not all patients who live in high EE families relapse and not all patients in low EE families avoid relapse – Family dysfunction is an incomplete explanation for schizophrenia

Question 13

What is a weakness of the family relationships approach?

Answer 13

there is a problem of cause and effect

Question 14

What did Mischler and Waxler (1968) find?

Answer 14

significant differences in the way mothers spoke to their schizophrenic daughters compared to their normal daughters, which suggests that dysfunctional communication may be a result of living with the schizophrenic rather than the cause of the disorder. This suggests that there is a problem of the chicken and egg scenario in relation to expressed emotion causing schizophrenia.

Question 15

What does the cognitive approach examine?

Answer 15

how people think, how they process information

Question 16

What are cognitive deficits?

Answer 16

impairments in thought processes such as perception, memory and attention

Question 17

What are cognitive biases?

Answer 17

are present when people notice, pay attention to, or remember certain types of information better than other.

Question 18

What does evidence show about those diagnosed with schizophrenia and the way they process information?

Answer 18

diagnosed schizophrenics have difficulties in processing various types of informationfor example visual and auditory information

Question 19

What does research indicate about their attention skills?

Answer 19

may be deficient – they often appear easily distracted

Question 20

What have studies suggested about people with difficulties in understanding other people’s behaviour?

Answer 20

They have difficulties in understanding other people’s behaviour
Social behavior depends, in part, on using other people’s actions as clues for understanding what they might be thinking

Question 21

What are differenct behaviours caused by cognitive deficits?

Answer 21

reduced levels of emotional expression, disorganised speech and delusions

Question 22

What is a strength of the cognitive explanation?

Answer 22

Practical applications

Question 23

What did Yellowless et al. (2002) develop?

Answer 23

a machine that produced virtual hallucinations, such as hearing the television telling you to kill yourself or one person’s face morphing into another’s. The intention is to show schizophrenics that their hallucinations are not real. This suggests that understanding the effects of cognitive deficits allows psychologists to create new initiatives for schizophrenics and improve the quality of their lives

Question 24

What is a weakness of the cognitive explanation?

Answer 24

there are problems with cause and effect. Cognitive approaches do not explain the causes of cognitive deficits – where they come from in the first place. Is it the cognitive deficits which causes the schizophrenic behavior or is the schizophrenia that causes the cognitive deficits? This suggests that there are problems with the chicken and egg problem.

Question 25

What is a second weakness of the cognitive model?

Answer 25

reductionist. The reason for this is because the approach does not consider other factors such as genes. It could be that the problems caused by low neurotransmitters creates the cognitive deficits. This suggests that the cognitive approach is oversimplistic when consider the explanation of schizophrenia.