Psychological Explanations For Schizophrenia

Question 1

Schizophrenogenic mother

Answer 1

• Meaning schizophrenia causing mothers are cold, rejecting and controlling, creating a family climate of tension and secrecy.
• this leads to distrust which develops into paranoid delusions and ultimately schizophrenia.

Question 2

Double bind theory 1

Answer 2

• A child may be regularly trapped in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing but receive conflicting messages about what counts as wrong.
• when the child gets it wrong they are punished with withdrawal of love.
• they learn that the world is confusing and dangerous, leading to disorganised thinking and delusions, difficulties communicating and high levels of interpersonal conflict.

Question 3

Double bind theory 2

Answer 3

• the child doesn’t know how to respond to the conflict between words and the body language.
• They cannot express their feelings about the unfairness of the situation.
• child cannot resolve confusion, leading to internally conflict and prevents the development of s coherent sense of reality.

Question 4

Double bind theory example:

Answer 4

A person says to their wife “that was pretty funny from you” The compliment expresses admiration (you are funny) but it is contradicted by the implied criticism that they are not usually funny.

Question 5

Expressed emotion

Answer 5

The level of emotion expressed toward the schizophrenic patient.
- verbal criticism
- hostility
- emotional over-involvement

Question 6

Verbal criticism

Answer 6

Critical attitudes are combinations of hostile and emotional over - involvement. It shows that there is an openness that the disorder is not entirely in the patients control, but there is still criticism .

Question 7

Hostility

Answer 7

Hostility is negative attitude directed at the patient because the family feels that the disorder is controllable and that the patient is choosing not to get better. Problems in the family are often blamed on the patient.

Question 8

Emotional over-involvement

Answer 8

The family member shows a lot of concern for the patient and the disorder. The opposite of a hostile attitude but may still make the patient feel guilty. The pity from the person causes too much stress and can cause a relapse to cope with the pity.

Question 9

Expressed emotions effects…

Answer 9

• worsen prognosis in patients with schizophrenia
• increase likelihood of relapse and re admission into hospital for the patient.

Question 10

AO3 limitation of psychological explanations

Answer 10

• A limitation of the family dysfunction explanation is that high expressed emotion amongst families could be a symptom rather than a cause. This implies that certain family settings are a consequence of living with a schizophrenic rather than the factor that helped the schizophrenia to originate in the first place.
• Also, there is almost no evidence to support the importance of traditional, family-based theories e.g schizophrenogenic mother. Both theories are based on clinical observation of patients’ informal assessment of the personality of the patients mothers.
• evidence from childhood experience to support these theories was gathered after the patient had already developed schizophrenia This suggests that patients’ disturbed cognitions may distort the validity of the information patients provide when recalling how their parents treated them as children.

Question 11

AO3 strengths of psychological explanations

Answer 11

+ there is evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia.
Read et al (2005) reported adults with schizophrenia are disproportionately likely to have insecure attachment (Type C or D). 69% of women and 59% of men with schizophrenia have a history of physical and/or sexual abuse.

+ Support for the family dysfunction explanation comes from Berger (1965) who found that schizophrenics reported a higher recall of double bind statements by their mothers than nonschizophrenics. This implies that it was the exposure to mixed messages from a specific family member that caused the schizophrenia to occur in their children.

Question 12

Dysfunctional thought process

Answer 12

• lower levels of information in some areas of the brain suggests that cognition is impaired - reducing processing within the ventral striatum (associated with negative symptoms)
• also explains metacognitions where a schizophrenic is not aware of their thoughts or what they are feeling (explains positive symptoms were they lose touch with reality).

Question 13

Metarepresentation = hallucinations