Psychological explanations for schizophrenia

Question 1

What are the two main psychological explanations for SZ?

Answer 1

Family dysfunction and cognitive explanations

Question 2

How can the family dysfunction explanation be explained?

Answer 2

in three ways: Schizophrenogenic mother, double bind theory and expressed emotion

Question 3

schizophrenogenic mother

Answer 3

schizophrenia causing mother who is cold rejecting and controlling as well as creating a family full of secrecy and tension leading to children having a lack of trust

Question 4

What is the father like in a family with a schizophrenogenic mother?

Answer 4

The father is often passive and doesn’t really get involved in child upbringing

Question 5

Who proposed the schizophrenogenic mother?

Answer 5

Fromm-Reichmann (1948)

Question 6

Who proposed the double bind theory?

Answer 6

Bateson et al (1972)

Question 7

What is the double bind theory?

Answer 7

The child receives two contradictory messages from the parents or caregivers and thus develops a false conception of reality. They may be punished by the withdrawal of love

Question 8

What is expressed emotion?

Answer 8

Level of negative emotion expressed towards a patient by their carers. causes stress

Question 9

What are the three parts of expressed emotion?

Answer 9

Verbal criticism, Hostility and Emotional over involvement

Question 10

What are the strengths of family dysfunction as a risk factor for schizophrenia?

Answer 10

• Research support by Tienari et al (1994) - Read et al (2005) - Double bind theory support, Bateson (1956), - EE support from kavanagh (1992)

Question 11

What did Tienari et al (1994) find to support family dysfunction as a risk factor for sz?

Answer 11

Adopted children who had schizophrenic bio parents were more likely to have sz but only happened when the adopted family was dysfunctional

Question 12

Read et al (2005)

Answer 12

Reviewed 46 studies linking child abuse to schizophrenia. Found 69% adult women in-patients had experienced physical and/or sexual abuse in childhood (59% for men)

Question 13

What did Bateson (1956) find to support double bind theory?

Answer 13

Case study on recovering schizophrenic visited by his mother and she gave mixed messages and he then assaulted an aide and had to be restrained.

Question 14

How did Kavanagh (1992) find support for expressed emotion in the relapse of sz?

Answer 14

Reviewed 26 studies and found the relapse rate for schizophrenics with high expressed emotion was 48% compared to 21%

Question 15

What are the weaknesses of family dysfunction as a risk factor of SZ?

Answer 15

• Liem (1974) found contradicting evidence for double bind - Altorfer et al (1998) for EE - parent blaming - environmentally reductionist

Question 16

How did Liem (1974) find contradicting evidence for double bind theory?

Answer 16

Measured patterns of parental communication in families with a schizophrenic child and found no difference when compared to normal families

Question 17

How did Altorfer et al (1998) find contradicting evidence for EE?

Answer 17

1/4 patients studied showed no physiological responses to stressful comments from their relatives

Question 18

What does the cognitive explanation for SZ look at?

Answer 18

focuses on the role of mental processes and sz is associated with types of dysfunctional thought processing

Question 19

What two types of dysfunctional thinking did Frith et al (1992) identify?

Answer 19

Metarepresentation and Central control

Question 20

Metarepresentation

Answer 20

Cognitive ability to reflect on ones own thoughts and behaviours, knowing our intentions and being aware of others behaviours.

Question 21

Central control

Answer 21

Cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead

Question 22

What are the advantages of the cognitive explanation of SZ?

Answer 22

+ Support from Stirling et al (2006) + success of CBT

Question 23

How did Stirling et al (2006) find research support for dysfunctional thought processing?

Answer 23

Compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of SZ with 18 non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks (stroop effect). SZ patients took twice as long.

Question 24

What are the weaknesses of cognitive explanations for sz?

Answer 24

• Hard to establish cause and effect - Fails to look at biological factors