Psychological explanations for schizophrenia Flashcards
What are 2 psychological explanations for schizophrenia?
- Family dysfunction 2. Cognitive explanation.
What is family dysfunction?
People are more at risk of developing schizophrenia if they have experienced abnormal processes within their family environment such as conflict, communications and control
What are three risk factors within the family which could trigger schizophrenia?
- Double bind theory
- The schizophrenogenic mother
- Expressed emotion
Who developed schizophrenic mother theory, why? How does this lead to schizophrenia?
Fromm-Reichman (1948) found many of her patients who had schizophrenia spoke of a particular type of parent. Cold, rejecting and controlling creates a family climate of tensions and secrecy. This can result in distrust which could then lead to paranoid delusions.
What is the double bind theory?
Children are given conflicting messages from parents e.g. mother telling son she loves him and turning away in disgust= confusion in child.
How can the double-bind theory lead to schizophrenia?
Mixed messages prevent development of internally coherent construction of reality and create confusion. This confusion can lead to disorganised thinking and this can manifest in psychotic symptoms and a loss of contact with reality.
What is expressed emotion and how is it linked to schizophrenia?
Family communication style in which high levels of negative emotions are expressed including verbal criticisms and sometimes violence, leading to hostile climate. This has been found to result in higher relapse rates.
What is the cognitive explanation for schizophrenia?
Proposes that abnormalities in a person’s thought processes (dysfunctional thought processing) are a key component of schizophrenia.
What are two kinds of dysfunctional thought processing and which symptoms do they cause?
- Dysfunction in meta-representation= hallucinations and delusions
- Dysfunction in central control= disorganised speech.
What is central control and how does dysfunction in our central control lead to schizophrenic symptoms??
The cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses whilst we perform deliberate actions.
Inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts and replace them with deliberate thoughts causes disorganised speech and thought disorder.
2 Strengths of cognitive explanations for schizophrenia
Evidence for dysfunctional information processing:
Stirling et al. (2006)- compared patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks, including the Stroop Test. Participants must name the ink colours of coloured words, suppressing the impulse to read the words. They found that patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group.
This supports the idea that people with schizophrenia have a dysfunction in their central control.
Support from success of cognitive therapies:
The effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBTp) has been demonstrated in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) review of treatments for schizophrenia. This review found consistent evidence that, when compared with treatment by antipsychotic medication, CBT was more effective in reducing symptom severity and improving levels of social functioning.
What is meta representation and how does the dysfunction in this lead to schizophrenic symptoms?
Cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour and allow us insight into our own intentions and interpret actions of others.
2 Limitations of cognitive explanations for schizophrenia
Causation-correlation issue:
Could be that cognitive dysfunctions are a result of schizophrenia, not a cause.
Environmentally reductionist:
Ignores biological factors which have been supported by research. - Ripke et al. (2014) studied the genetic makeup of 37,000 patients and found 108 seperate variations of base pairs associated with increased risk of schizophrenia. They found these coded for the functioning of dopamine.
2 Strengths (1 COUNTER) for family dysfunction explanations for schizophrenia
Research support:
Read et al. (2005)- reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia. Found that 69% of adult women and 59% of male in-patients with schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both.
COUNTER: Information about childhood experiences was gathered after the development of symptoms and the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences. Brings into question the validity of the results.
Practical application:
Has allowed for the creation of family therapies which have been effective in the treatment of schizophrenia. Pharoeh et al. (2010) - Carried out a metanalysis on the effectiveness of family therapies and found it significantly reduced hospital readmissions after a year, quality of life for patients and their carers versus standard care.
2 Limitations for family dysfunction explanations for schizophrenia
Socially sensitive:
The idea that family dysfunction can be causing the development of schizophrenia can lead to parent-blaming. Mothers seem to be particularly blamed (schizophrenogenic mother). This places an unfair burden on the mother especially after having to watch their child experience schizophrenic symptoms and take responsibility for their care- to be blamed on top of this could cause significant distress.
Lacks support:
Fromm-Reichman’s theories are based on observations and informal assessments of patients’ mothers’ personalities, but not systematic evidence.
Double-bind and expressed emotion unconvincing, in fact patterns of parental communication in families with a schizophrenic child have been measure by researchers who found no difference when compared to normal families.
