psychological explanations of schizophrenia Flashcards
what are the two types of psychological explanations of schizophrenia
1) family dysfunction
2) cognitive explanations
define family dysfunction
the presence of problems in a family that contribute to relapse rates in recovering schizophrenics; including lack of warmth between parents and child and dysfunctional communication patterns and parental over protection
outline the double blind theory
the idea that children who frequently receive contradictory messages from their parents are more likely to develop schizophrenia
the child receives two conflicting messages about their relationship on different communication levels so their ability to respond is prevented as one message invalidates the other
this prevents the construction of an internally coherent construction of reality which eventually manifests its self as schizophrenia symptoms
what is meant by expressed emotions
a family communication style in which members of the family talk about the patient in a hostile or critical manner, or in a way that indicates emotional over-involvement of concern.
outline how expressed emotion can affect relapse rates in schizophrenic patients
people with schizophrenia have a lower tolerance to intense environmental stimuli, particularly intense emotional comments with family members
when expressed mention is high it arouses the patient leading to stress beyond their impaired coping mechanisms triggering a schizophrenic episode
what are the cognitive explanations of delusions
the patient’s interpretations of their experiences are controlled by the inadequate information processing
the individual perceives themselves to be the central component of events- egocentric bias, therefore leading to delusions where the individual relates irrelevant events to themselves causing an arrive at the wrong conclusion such as muffled voices criticizing them
what are the cognitive explanations of hallucinations
hallucinating individuals are hypervigilant- focusing excessive attention on environmental stimuli- this causes a higher expectancy for the occurrence of s voice compared to normal individuals
patients find it hard to tell the difference between imagery and sensory-based perception therefore their inner representation of an idea can override the actual sensory stimuli and produce a visual or auditory image
how come patients which schizophrenia are unable to correct hallucinations
patients do not go through the same processing of reality checking as others would dp
evaluate family dysfunction
1) supporting evidence - the importance of family relationships was demonstrated in an adoption study= children have adopted whose biological parents have schizophrenia increasing the likelihood of the children also developing schizophrenia- however, symptoms only emerged when the adopted family were rated as disturbed- suggesting only manifest under certain conditions and genetic vulnerability is not sufficient
2) critical evidence- not all patients who live in high EE families relapse and vice versa- research found that 1/4 of all patients they studied showed no physiological responses to stressful comments from their relatives showing that there are individual differences in the vulnerability of EE decreasing the predictive validity of the family dysfunction theory
3) issue and debate- nature vs nurture- takes a nurturing side of the debate but ignores biological influences such as genetic or hormonal influences
4) research methods= ethics= it may be considered unethical towards family members to reveal that their behaviours may be responsible for increased relapse rates in the patients making socially sensitive research
evaluate cognitive explanations of schizophrenia
1) supporting research from cognitive therapies= the effectiveness of CBT for psychosis was demonstrated in a review of treatments of schizophrenics which found consistent evidence that compared to treatment with medicine- CBT was more effective at reducing symptom severity, this supports the view that fault cognition has an important causal influence in the development of schizophrenia
2) issue and debate- nature-nurture, ignore nature side such as role of neurotransmitters and gentics
3) research support- supporting evidence for the claim that positive symptoms have their origins in faulty cognition- eg delusional patients were found to show various biases in information processing such as jumping to conclusions and lack of reality tetsing-
