Psychological Explanations For Schziophrenia Flashcards
What are the 3 type of characteristics that parents do schizophrenics display?”
- High levels of interpersonal conflicts (arguments)
- Difficulty communicating with each other
- Being excessively critical and controlling of their children
What are the 2 psychological explanations for SZ?
Family dysfunction and the cognitive explanation
What are the examples of family dysfunction?
- The schizophrenogenic mother (Fromm-Reichmann 1948)
- Double bind theory (Bateson et al 1971)
- Expressed emotion and schizophrenia (EE)
What is the schizophrenogenic mother?
Mothers of schizophrenics that are cold, rejecting and controlling
What are the consequences of a schizophrenogenic mother?
A family climate is characterised by tension and secrecy which leads to distrust and paranoid delusions
What is the double-bind theory?
When a schizophrenic child receives mixed messages/signals from people, for example a mother says “I love you” to her child but says it with a very stern face.
What are the consequences of the double-bind theory?
- It leads to confused and dangerous thinking of the world
- They feel unfairness and seek clarification on the mixed message
- When they get it wrong they are punished with withdrawal of love
What do the consequences of the double-bind theory lead to?
Disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions
What did Bateson make clear about the double-bind theory?
It is just a risk factor (more likely to develop SZ) and not a defining point of all schizophrenia suffers’ family
What is the expressed emotion and schizophrenia?
The level of negative emotions expressed toward patients by their carers
What are the EE emotions?
- Verbal criticism of the patient
- Hostility toward the patient
- Emotional over-involvement in the life of the patient
What are the consequences of EE?
Causes stress for the patient which can explanation relapse and can trigger the onset of schizophrenia in a vulnerable person due to their genetic makeup
What is the cognitive explanation for SZ?
That there is role of mental processes that characterise the disorder
What are the 2 types of dysfunctional thought processes in the cognitive explanation (Frith et al 1992)?
- Meta representation
- Central control
What is meta representation?
The ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead
What is dysfunction in meta representation?
Disruption would be the inability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves instead of others
What is the dysfunction of MR an explanation of?
Hallucinations and voices of delusion like insertion (having thoughts projected into the mind by others
What is central control?
The ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead of
What is dysfunction in central control?
Inability to control automatic thoughts and responses leading to disorganized speech and thought disorder
What are the evaluation points for family dysfunction?
+ Supporting evidence - Read et al 2005
- Retrospective data - distorted memories
+ supported by research into family dysfunction as a risk factor - Read et al 2005 & Berry et al 2008
What are the evaluation of the cognitive explanation?
+ Strong evidence - Stirling et al 2006
- Direction of causality - unclear causation
