Psychological explanations of schizophrenia Flashcards
What are the 3 psychological explanations of schizophrenia?
Psychodynamic
Cognitive
Social cultural-family and life events
Outline the psychodynamic approach
The basic assumption is that adult experiences are rooted from childhood experiences. E.g. how a child perceives and interacts with the world. Freud believed schizophrenics regressed to an earlier stage of development. This is where people take on stage of a child to deal with situations.
How can you link the psychodynamic approach to symptoms?
When you hallucinate you go back to pre-ego stage.
What is the evaluation of Freud?
Theorists are unconvinced by the link between childhood and adulthood. Family studies are retrospective too, most psychologists believe that the psychodynamic approach is not the only factor. The genetic evidence is too strong.
Explain the evaluation of psychodynamic- no link between childhood and adulthood
Freud’s theory has no evidence and hence no supporting evidence. However, research has shown that parents of schizophrenic children do act different that parents of non-schizophrenic children. Research has found that families who are overprotective and dominant have influenced the development of schizophrenia. This difference in behaviour however, is likely to be a consequence of the condition rather than a cause
What are the 2 pieces of evidence that support the psychodynamic approach?
Schizophrenic core of personality
Childhood abuse and schzophrenia
Explain the schizophrenic core of personality type for the support of the psychodynamic appraoach
Children go through a stage of life in the first few months of life which is characterised by feelings of being omnipotence. A poor relationship with a care giver in this time can prevent them from growing out of this stage.
When these individuals go through a traumatic life event it leads to feelings of paranoia-symptoms of schizophrenia e.g. hallucinations
Explain the childhood abuse and schizophrenia link that supports the psychodynamic approach
Those with schizophrenia reported abuse in early childhood, showing the importance of early family relationships. However, this data is retrospective and those with schizophrenia have impaired memory. However, the data only is correlational.
What is the major ethical issue with the psychodynamic model?
It is unethical to blame the parents without clear evidence.
cognitive
what is the main assumption?
that the role of attention is the issue. Mechanisms that filter and process incoming stimuli are defective so schizophrenics take in as much information as possible and so experience an information overload.
cognitive
The theory acknowledges the biological factors in causing schizophrenia but claim further features of the disorder are down to cognitive-explain
Cognitive malfunctions cause schizophrenia, biological factors cause initial sensory experiences but further features of the disorder appear as individuals try and understand these experiences.
cognitive
those with schizophrenia fail to activate schemas
Schema’s is an area of the brain that holds blue prints of past experiences .
the central deficit of schizophrenia is a break down in in the relationship between incoming stimuli and information already stored. Those with schizophrenia wont know which information to ignore and which to attend to and so could explain delusions.
cognitive
what are hallucinations a result of?
internal thoughts are not recognized as arising from memory and so are attributed to an external source so experienced as hallucinations.
cognitive
research has tried to come up with support for the hallucinations but why is it weak?
done on animals and so cannot generalise.
cognitive
`why has a machine been developed showing virtual hallucinations?
e.g. hearing the tv tell you to kill yourself. to show schizophrenics that their hallucinations arent real. As yet there is no evidence that this will provide a successful treatment.
