Psychological explanations for schizophrenia Flashcards
What is the schizophrenogenic mother and how does this stereotype trigger schizophrenia?
The schizophrenogenic mother is cold, rejecting and controlling which creates a tense family climate and leads to distrust. This later turns into paranoid delusions therefore triggering schizophrenia.
What is the double-bind theory and how does this stereotype trigger schizophrenia?
If a child finds themselves trapped in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing but they recieve mixed messages about what the wrong thing is and are therefore unable to seek clarification they will begin to see the world as confusing and dangerous especially if they are punished with the withdrawl of love. This leads to paranoid delusions and disorganised thinking.
What is expressed emotion and how can it lead to a relapse of schziophrenia?
Expressed emotion contains several elements such as verbal criticism, hostility and emotional over-involvement. Negative expressed emotion can be seen in families who struggle to deal with the problems associated with psychotic experiences and sometimes become critical or hostile towards the individual. On the other hand, the family may try and look after the relative as if they are a child and this emotional over-involvement can lead to dependence on carer.
What are the two types of dysfunctional thought processes identifitied by Frith?
Metarepresentation, Central Control
What is metarepresentation? How is this impaired within a schizophrenic brain?
The cognitive ability to relflect on our thoughts and behaviour. This allows us insights into our own intentions and goals. Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt a persons ability to recognise their own actions and thoughts as their own rather than by someone else which explains delusions and hallucinations.
What is central control? How is this impaired within a schizophrenic brain?
The ability to surpress automatic responses when we perform deliberate actions. Disorganised speech and thought disorder may come from here as a result to supress automatic throughts.
Strength of the cognitive approach to schizophrenia.
There is strong support for the idea that information is processed differently in the minds of people with schizophrenia.Stirling compared 30 people with a diagnosis of schizophenia with 18 controls on a range of cognitive tasks such as the stroop test. People with schizophrenia took twice as long to name the colour of the ink compared to the controls.However, the cognitive approach does not tell us the origin of the condition.
Strength of family dysfunction as a psychological explination for schizophrenia.
Read reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia and concluded that 69% of women in-patients with schizophrenia had a history of childhood abuse and for men it was 59%. Berry found children who had an insecure attachment to their primary caregiver were more likely to develop schizophrenia.
What is a limitation of studies linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia?
These studies are often retrospective which means information about childhood was only gained after the patients diagnosis of schizophrenia so therefore, the schizophrenic patient may have distorted the recall of their experiences.
Limitation of psychological explinations of schizophrenia.
The psychological explinations for schizophrenia do not consider the biological explinations. There is evidence that biological factors also play a role such as genetic predisposition. Therefore, it is useful to consider the role of both biological and psychological factors.
