psychological explanations for SZ

Question 1

Family dysfunction

Answer 1

refers to processes within a family such as poor family communication, cold parenting and high levels of expressed emotion.

Question 2

Cognitive explanations

Answer 2

explanations that focus on mental processes such as thinking, language and attention

Question 3

Dysfunctional thought processing

Answer 3

information processing that does not represent reality accurately and produced undesirable consequences

Question 4

Fromm-Reichmann’s psychodynamic explanation of the schizophrenic mother

Answer 4

• Accounts from patients about their childhoods
• Schizophrenogenic (SZ-causing) mother is cold rejecting and controlling
• Family climate characterised by tension and secrecy
• Leads to distrust that later develops into paranoid delusions

Question 5

double bind theory - Bateson et al emphasised the role of communication style within the family

Answer 5

• Developing child finds themselves trapped in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing
• Receive mixed messages about what this is, but don’t receive clarity
• Often ‘getting it wrong’ is punished by withdrawal of love
• Leaves them with confusing and dangerous understanding of the world
• Reflected in symptoms like disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions
• Just a RISK FACTOR

Question 6

Level of emotion (particularly negative emotion) expressed towards someone with SZ by their family members. It contains several elements:

Answer 6

• Verbal criticism of the person and sometimes violence
• Hostility towards the person, including anger and rejection
• Emotional overinvolvement in the life of the person, including self-sacrifice

Question 7

what can be a serious source of stress for the individual with SZ?

Answer 7

Expressed emotion (verbal criticism, hostility)

Question 8

What is expressed emotion responsible for?

Answer 8

relapse, onset of SZ in vulnerable people

Question 9

What can make a person vulnerable to SZ?

Answer 9

their genetic make-up (the diathesis-stress model).

Question 10

Research support -
Evidence linking family dysfunction to SZ

strength

Answer 10

• Indicators of family dysfunction include insecure attachment and abuse
• Read et al found that schizophrenic adults are disproportionately likely to have insecure attachment
• 69% of women and 59% of men with SZ have a history of abuse
  Strongly suggests that family dysfunction makes people more vulnerable to SZ

Question 11

Explanations lack support

limitation

Answer 11

• Almost no evidence to support existence of schizophrenogenic mother and double bind
• Both theories based on clinical observation of schizophrenics and informal assessments of mothers personalities
• No systematic evidence
  Family explanations have not been able to account for the link between childhood trauma and SZ

Question 12

Dysfunctional thinking description

Answer 12

Role of mental processes. Schizophrenia is associated with several types of dysfunctional thought processing.

Question 13

dysfunctional thinking is Characterised by disruption to normal thought processing:

Answer 13

• Reduced thought processing in ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms
• Reduced processing in temporal and cingulate gyris is associated with hallucinations

Question 14

Frith et al

Answer 14

identified two kinds of dysfunctional thought processes

Question 15

Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour

Answer 15

• Allows insight to own intentions and goals
• Allows interpretation of the actions of others

Question 16

Dysfunction in this would disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as carried out by ourselves, thus explaining

Answer 16

hallucinations of hearing voices and delusions like thought insertion.

Question 17

Frith et al also identified issues with the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions:

central control dysfunction

Answer 17

Speech poverty and thought disorder can result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts

Question 18

Research support -
Evidence for dysfunctional thought processing

strength

Answer 18

• Stirling et al compared performance on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with SZ to control group
• Stroop task → name font-colours of colour-words, so have to suppress the tendency to read the words aloud
• As predicted by central control theory, people with SZ took longer
  Cognitive processes are impaired

Question 19

A proximal explanation

limitation

Answer 19

• Cognitive explanations are proximal as they only explain what is happening now to produce symptoms
• Different from distal explanations which focus on what initially caused the condition
• Possible distal explanations are genetic and family dysfunction explanations
• Unclear how genetic variation or childhood trauma may lead to problems with metarepresentation or central control
  Cognitive theories only provide partial explanations of SZ