Psychological explanations of schizophrenia Flashcards
What are the 2 psychological treatments of schizophrenia?
- Family dysfunction
- Cognitive explanation
Features of family dysfunction:
- Schizophregenic mother
- Double bind theory
- High levels of expressed emotion
Schizophrogenic mother
Fromm-Reichmann
* mothers who are cold, rejecting and controlling
* relationship is based on tension and stress, leading to distrust, paranoia + delusions in the child in the future
* in turn leads to schizophrenia
Double bind theory
Bateson
* poor communication style within the family lrading to a negative, stressful climate
* child is fearful of making mistakes + is confused about the right way to behave due to mixed messages
High level of expressed emotion
- contradicting messages between the message being delivered + emotion used to express it
- tone of verbal criticism, anger, rejection and emotional overinvolvement
Evaluation of family dysfunction
+ Support from Tienari et al
- Researcher bias
- Scizophrenia may lead to family dysfunction
- Reductionism
Research support from Tienari et al (2004)
Found that levels of schizophrenia in adopted individuals who were the biological children of schizophregenic mothers was 5.8% in those adopted by healthy families compared to 36.8% for children raised in dysfunctional families. Suggests that nature can help to reduce/prevent the development of schizophrenia.
Researcher bias
Batesons idea of double bind was originally popular but some have accused him of focusing only on aspects of interviews with schizophregenics that supported his claims, making his theory biased. Evidence supporting a genetic link has further lessend supporting the idea.
Schizophrenia may lead to family dysfunction
Theres a lack of support for family dysfunction as a causal factor of schizophrenia. Research seems to suggest that family dysfunction, particularly expressed emotion, plays a major role in maintenance of the disorder.
* Rather than dysfunctions within families causing schizophrenia it could be that having schizophrenia within a family leads to dysfunction.
Reductionism
the explanation is reductionist. it only focuses on the impacts of family on schizophrenia and ignores equally important factors.
Cognitive explanations
Frith
1. Meta representation
2. Central control
Meta representation
ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour
* person with schizophrenia has a dysfunction in this cognitive ability
* they fail to recognise that their thoughts are their own and that the voice in their head is their own
* this is why they have auditory hallucinations and delusions
Central control
ability to suppress automatic thoughts
* a lack of this ability in schizophrogenic people means that they display speech poverty because there is disorganisation of thoughts and spoken sentences
* when speaking they change the topic mid conversation because each word triggers associations with something else which they fail to suppress
Evaluation of cognitive explanations
- Doesnt outline causes of schizophrenia
+ Able to account for a variety of symptoms
- There must be more than faulty information processing
Doesnt outline causes of schizophrenia
Cognitive theories in themselves do not explain what led to the cognitive dysfunctions seen in schizophrenics and thus cannot be seen as explaining the causes of schizophrenia.
Able to account for a variety of symptoms
a strength of the cognitive explanation is that it can account for both positive and negative symptoms.
There must be more than faulty information processing
Some critics argue that if the explanation for hallucinations is biased information processing, it ought to be possible to persuade a person with schizophrenia of the reality. In fact, it is extremely difficult to shift their thinking.
