Psychological Explanations for Schizophrenia Flashcards
Give 3 characteristics of the schizophrenogenic mother.
Cold, rejecting, controlling
How can a schizophrenogenic mother affect a families climate?
Causes tension and secrecy
A schizophrenogenic mother causes what symptoms in children?
Delusions
What is double bind?
Where a parent gives a contradictory messages and fears doing things wrong in case of upsetting their parent.
How might a schizophrenogenic mother punish a child?
Withdrawal of love
How does double bind lead to delusions?
When the child upsets the parent, they are punished by withdrawal of love, leading to the child feeling confused and causing development of disorganised thinking/delusions.
What is expressed emotion and how does it cause secrecy?
The family members of the person talk about the child in a critical way or over involve themselves in their personal lives, leading to more secrecy.
What is dysfunctional thinking?
Where schizophrenics process information differently to non schizophrenics.
How does dysfunctional metarepresentation lead to hallucinations?
Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else. This explains hallucinations.
How does lack of central control affect speech?
Disorganised speech and thought disorder thought to result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech, therefore causing speech poverty.
Explain the strength of there being research support for the family dysfunction explanation.
Which attachment types indicate family dysfunction (according to Read)?
Which type of childhood trauma indicates dysfunction?
What % of women and men respectively have experienced sexual/physical abuse who also experience family dysfunction?
In Morkved’s study, most adults with schizophrenia reported what?
Indicators of family dysfunction include insecure attachment and childhood trauma, especially abuse. According to Read, adults with schizophrenia are much more likely to be insecurely attached, particularly type C or D. Read also reported that 69% of women and 59% of men are likely to have history of sexual/physical abuse. In Morkved’s study, most adults with schizophrenia reported at least one trauma, showing how family dysfunction makes people more vulnerable to schizophrenia.
Explain the strength of there being research support for dysfunctional thought processing.
Stirling compared cognitive performance in how many people with schizophrenia and how many control?
What is the stroop task that PPTs had to complete?
How many times longer did schizophrenics take on the stroop task? What does this show about cognition in schizophrenics?
Stirling compared performance on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with schizophrenia and 30 people without it. Tasks included the stroop task where PPTs would name the colour of the font of the word of a colour. As predicted by the theory of central control, people with schizophrenia took 2x longer on average to complete the task and name the font colour. This means that cognitive processes of people with schizophrenia are impaired.
Explain the strength of support from success of cognitive therapies.
What type of therapy did McFarlane conclude was the most effective?
Relapse rates by this type of therapy are reduced by what %?
When should family therapies be used to be most effective? Which society also recommends this?
A review of studies by McFarlane found that family therapies are one of the most effective treatments of schizophrenia. In particular, relapse rates were found to be reduced, typically by 50-60%. He also concluded that using family therapies as soon as mental health begins to decline is the most beneficial. Clinical advice from NICE recommends family therapy for everyone as soon as they are diagnosed with schizophrenia. Therefore, family therapy is likely to benefit people with different severities of schizophrenia.
Explain the limitation of the family dysfunction explanation lacking support.
What are the issues with the schizophrenogenic mother and double bind theories?
These theories are based on…
What are the limitations surrounding this way of forming theories?
There is almost no evidence ti support that traditional family based theories such as the schizophrenogenic mother and double bind are important. Both of these theories are based on clinical observation of people with schizophrenia and informal assessments of their mothers, but these are not pieces of systemic evidence. This means that family explanations are not able to account for the link between trauma and schizophrenia.
