Psychological explanations for schizophrenia

Question 1

Family dysfunction - Double-bind theory

Answer 1

• The child finds themselves in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing but receive mixed messages about what this is and feels unable to comment on the unfairness of this situation
• When they get it wrong child is punished by withdrawal of love
• Leaves them thinking the world in confusing and dangerous - reflected in symptoms like paranoid delusions
• Researchers suggested this is a risk factor for developing SZ

Question 2

Family dysfunction - Expressed emotion

Answer 2

• Level of emotion (usually negative) expressed towards person with SZ by their carers or family members
• EE contains several elements: 1) Verbal criticism of the person, accompanied by violence 2) Hostility towards person, including anger and rejection
  3) Emotional overinvolvement in life of person
• These are a serious source of stress for person with SZ
• A primary explanation for relapse in people with SZ - however it can also trigger onset of SZ in a person who is already vulnerable

Question 3

Cognitive explanations - Dysfunctional thinking

Answer 3

• Info processing that doesn’t represent reality accurately and produces undesirable consequences
• SZ is associated with lots of DT
• Reduced thought processing in Ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms
• Reduced processing in temporal and cingulate gyri is associated with hallucinations
• Suggests cognition is impaired

Question 4

Cognitive explanations - Metarepresentation dysfunction

Answer 4

• Identified 2 types of DT processes
  1) Metarepresentation - the cognitive ability to reflect thoughts and behaviour - allows insight into our intentions and goals - also allows us to interpret the actions of others
• It would disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than someone else

Question 5

Cognitive explanations - Central control dysfunction

Answer 5

2) Central control - issues with cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions - speech poverty could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts

Question 6

Family dysfunction - evaluation - strength

Answer 6

• Evidence linking to SZ
• Indicators of family dysfunction include attachment and exposure to childhood trauma, especially abuse
• Research has found that adults with SZ are likely to have insecure attachment - also found that 69% of women and 59% of men with SZ have history with physical and/or sexual abuse

Question 7

Family dysfunction - evaluation - limitation

Answer 7

• Poor evidence base
• Plenty of evidence supporting idea that childhood family-based stress is associated with adult SZ
• But there’s almost none to support the importance of traditional family-based theories such as a double-bind

Question 8

Cognitive explanations - evaluation - strength

Answer 8

• Evidence support from dysfunctional thinking
• Researchers compared performance on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with SZ and a control group of 30 people without SZ
• As predicted, people with SZ took longer to complete the tasks

Question 9

Cognitive explanations - evaluation - limitation

Answer 9

• Only explains the proximal origins of symptoms
• Cognitive explanations for SZ are proximal - explains what is happening now to produce symptoms as opposed to distal explanations which focus on what initially caused the conditions
• Possible explanations are genetic and family dysfunction - but what isn’t clear is how genetic variation or childhood trauma might lead to problems with metarepresentation or central control