Psychological explanations Of SZ

Question 1

Outline- family disfunction.

Answer 1

A possibly cause of SZ is having a Schizophregenic mother. (Reichmann)
the Schizophregenic mother is:
- cold
- rejecting
- controlling
- tends to create a family climate characterised by tension and secrecy.
This mother causes the child to have paranoid delusions and ultimately SZ.

Question 2

Outline- expressed emotion

Answer 2

If a child’s parents often ‘express their emotion’ the child is likely to experience schizophrenia. EE includes:

• verbal criticism occasionally accompanied by violence.
• hostility, including anger and aggression.
• emotional over involvement in the child’s life, including needless self sacrifice.

Question 3

Outline- double-bind theory

Answer 3

• the Family Climate as a cause of SZ
• when there’s a lack of communication in the family, the child can often feel trapped as they always fear doing something wrong, as they receive mixed messages and don’t know what is right and wrong.
• the child would be punished with withdrawal of love.
• as a result the child gets an understanding of the world as a confusing and dangerous place. Which can result in paranoid delusions.

Question 4

Outline- cognitive explanation

Answer 4

Focused on mental processes such as thinking, language and attention.
The ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms of SZ.
Christopher frith et al (1992)
Two types of dysfunctional thought processing which could cause symptoms:
Metarepresentation- the cognitive ability to reflect on thought as we behave. Dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt out ability to recognise out on actions and thought as being carried out. This would explain hallucinations of voices and delusions.
Central control- the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead. Inability to do this would result in derailment of thoughts and speech.

Question 5

Evaluation- family disfunction as a risk factor

Answer 5

Read et al
A large proportion of SZ patients report sexual abuse as a child, or insecure attachment.
This supports the fact that there’s a link between upbringing and SZ.
HOWEVER
Most evidence is retrospective and therefore lacks validity. People may get information wrong and what someone says was sexual abuse may not have been.

Question 6

Evaluation- Strong evidence for dysfunctional thought processing

Answer 6

Stirling et al.
-Compared 30 patients of SZ with 18 control group.
-they did the stroop test (you have to name the colour the word is written in but the word written is the name of a different colour.
-SZ patients took longer to complete the task.
-So- SZ is caused by cognitive dysfunctions.
HOWEVER
We don’t know the origin of the symptoms. We can tell what causes the symptoms but not the origin of the condition.