Psychological Explanations For Schizophrenia

Question 1

What does the term ‘family dysfunction’ refer to?

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Who proposed the schizophrenogenic mother?

Answer 2

• Fromm-Reichmann based on the accounts she heard from her patients about their childhoods.

Question 3

What did Fromm-Reichmann notice about many of her patients?

Answer 3

• they spoke of a particular type of parent, the ‘schizophrenogenic mother’

Question 4

According to Reichmann, what is the schizophrenogenic mother like?

Answer 4

• cold, rejecting, controlling and tends to create a family climate characterised by tension and secrecy

Question 5

What does a schizophrenogenic mother lead to?

Answer 5

• distrust that later develops into paranoid delusions and ultimately schizophrenia

Question 6

What dis Bateson emphasised about family climate and its relevance to schizophrenia?

Answer 6

• he emphasised the role of communication style within a family.

Question 7

DBT: What does the developing child usually find themselves in?

Answer 7

• situations where they fear that they are doing the wrong thing, but receive mixed messages about what this is and feel unable to comment on the unfairness of the situation or seek clarification.

Question 8

DBT: What happens when children ‘get things/it wrong’?

Answer 8

• they are often punished with a withdrawal of love, this leaves them with an understanding that the world is confusing and dangerous which is reflected in symptoms like disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions.

Question 9

What is expressed emotion?

Answer 9

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

Question 10

What elements does expressed emotion contain?

Answer 10

• verbal criticism of the patient, occasionally accompanied by violence
• hostility towards the patient, including anger and rejection
• emotional over-involvement in the life of the patient, including needless self-sacrifice

Question 11

What do high levels of expressed emotion in carers cause for the patients and what does this lead to?

Answer 11

• this is a serious source of stress for the patient, which is an explanation for relapse in patients with schizophrenia.

Question 12

How may the diathesis stress model be applied to expressed emotion?

Answer 12

• it may be that the expressed emotion is a source of stress which can trigger the onset of schizophrenia in individuals who are already vulnerable, for example due to their genetic makeup.

Question 13

What do cognitive explanations for schizophrenia suggest?

Answer 13

• that schizophrenia is caused by abnormal thinking processes

Question 14

Who identified two types of dysfunctional thought processing and what are they?

Answer 14

Frith et al:
- metarepresentation and central control

Question 15

What is metrarepresentation?

Answer 15

• the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour which allows us insight to our own intentions and goals.
• allows us to interpret the actions of others.

Question 16

What would dysfunctional metarepresentation mean?

Answer 16

• disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else.
• this would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions like thought insertion.

Question 17

What is central control?

Answer 17

• the ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead.

Question 18

What symptoms could dysfunction in central control explain?

Answer 18

• disorganised speech and thought disorder as they could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.

Question 19

Evaluation: Research Support - Family Dysfunction

Answer 19

• Strength = evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia
• Indicators of family dysfunction include insecure attachment and exposure to childhood trauma.
• Read et al: Review- adults with schizophrenia are disproportionately likely to have an insecure attachment, particularly type C or D.
• Read et al: 69% of women and 59% of men with schizophrenia have a history of physical and/or sexual abuse.
• Strongly suggests that family dysfunction makes people more vulnerable to schizophrenia.

Question 20

Evaluation: Parent Blaming - Family Dysfunction

Answer 20

• Research linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia is highly socially sensitive because it can lead to parent-blaming.
• For parents already having to watch their child experience the symptoms of schizophrenia and take responsibility for their care, to be blamed adds insult to injury.

Question 21

Evaluation: Research Support - Cognitive Explanations

Answer 21

• Strength = evidence for dysfunctional thought processing
• Sterling et al: compared performance on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with schizophrenia and a control group of 30 people without it. Tasks included the Stroop task (have to say the colour that the word is written in). People with schizophrenia took over twice as longer, on average, to name the font-colours.
• Cognitive processes of those with schizophrenia are impaired.

Question 22

Evaluation: A Proximal Explanation- Cognitive Explanations

Answer 22

• Limitation = only explain the proximal origin of symptoms
• They explain what is happening now to produce symptoms unlike distal explanations which focus on what initially caused the condition.
• Distal explanations = genetic explanations and family dysfunction explanations.
• What is unclear and not well-addressed is how genetic variation or childhood trauma may lead to problems with metarepresentation and central control.
• Cognitive theories on their own only provide partial explanations for schizophrenia.