schizophrenia Flashcards
What is schizophrenia ?
SZ is a mental illness where contact and insight with reality is impaired and is an example of psychosis.
Positive symptoms are an excess/distortion of normal functions
What are the positive symptoms of schizophrenia?
Hallucinations
Delusions
Psychomotor disturbances such as pulling hair and rocking
Disordered thinking
Negative symptoms are the loss of normal functions and are usually harder to treat
What are the negative symptoms of SZ?
Affective flattening: Loss of emotive language and facial expressions
Alogia: Speech poverty, lack of words
Avoliation: Lack of motivation for everyday activities and becoming apathetic
What are some additional social and occupational dysfunctions that come with SZ?
Loss of ability to make friends, being unable to work and appearing lazy and unmotivated..
How would you diagnose SZ?
The use of the DSM and ICD which classify SZ when the supposed sufferer shows two symptoms and other social + occupational dysfunction for a month straight.
What does the psychological explanation of SZ propose?
The psychological explanation of SZ proposes that mental disorders arise from unresolved conflicts during childhood and are manifestations of imbalances between the ID, EGO and SUPEREGO.
How does the psychological explanation of SZ propose that SZ can be recovered from?
Disorders can be resolved when coming intro terms with the repressed ideas and conflicts.
What does the family dysfunction explanation of SZ propose? What are some features of schizophrenic parents?
The family dysfunction explanation proposes that maladaptive relationships and bad patterns of communications are a source of stress and can influence the development of schizophrenia.
These parents are called schizophrenic parents who have high levels of interpersonal conflict, difficulty communicating and are critical of their children.
How can he imbalance of the psychological personalities explain SZ?
What symptoms can this explain?
SZ is believed to be the result of regressing to the pre-ego stage where the ID is control which is the hedonistic part of our personality where we are unaware of wrongs and right and do not have a real awareness of the world. The individual will regress to a primitive state.
This can explain delusions.
Who proposed the idea of a schizophrenogenic mother and what characteristic will she have?
Reichman, who agreed with Freud that disordered families were the cause of SZ, 1948 believed that schizophrenogenic mothers influence the development of schizophrenia.
They are rejecting, but over protective, dominant, cold and moralistic.
How do Waring and Ricks contradict Reichmanns beliefs?
Waring and Ricks found that mothers of schizophrenics were anxious, shy and withdrawn which do not match with the characteristics proposed by Reichmann and additionally they believed that there was no clear difference between mothers of SZ and mothers of non-SZ which questions the cause and effect.
What is the double bind theory?
The double bind theory proposed by Bateson et al suggests that children who frequently receive contradictory messages from their parents and more likely to develop SZ as this prevents the development of a regular structure of reality and lead to symptoms such as affective flattening.
What is the expressed emotion (EE) explanation of SZ?
This theory suggests that a high level of expressed emotions. which could be the over involvement of family and critical talking of SZ, increase the relapse rates of schizophrenics due to stress.
What did Kalafi and Torabi find out regarding EE in Iran?
Kalafi and Torabi found that in Iran, where families have a high prevalence of EE, are one of the main reasons for relapse rates due to stress which can trigger an SZ episode.
Evaluate the family dysfunction explanation of SZ
+ Has positive implications, Hogarty developed a family therapy aimed to reduced the levels of expressed emotions within families and reduce family conflicts which have found to lower relapse rates.
+Berger found that Sz’s reported higher levels of double blind statements during their childhood than healthy induviudals
=Cause and effect is questionable, suggested by Warings and Ricks that there is no real difference between the mothers of SZ and non SZ
=Heavy blame placed on mothers, social implications
=Does not consider the biological explanation of SZ which may not be able to be controlled by the treatment of family problems
What does the cognitive explanation suggest about SZ?
The cognitive explanation suggests that maladaptive behaviour is the result of faulty/irrational thinking regarding a situation rather than the problem itself and you can recover from it by becoming rational and positive in your thinking.
Frith et al identified two dysfunctions involved in cognitive thought process to explain SZ symptoms. what is meta representation and what does it cause when disturbed?
Meta representation is the cognitive ability to reflect on ones own thoughts and behaviours to interpret their own actions and that of others.
Dysfunction in meta representation would disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and percieve our actions being carried out by someone else rather than ourselves.
This can explain hallucinations of voice and delusions
Frith et al identified two dysfunctions involved in SZ, what is central control and what does it cause when disturbed?
Central control is the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while be preform deliberate actions.
Dysfunction in the central control can lead to disorganised speech and disordered thinking as you are unable to suppress automatic thoughts and speech and one thing is triggered by another.
What did Helmsly propose ? ( Cognitive theory )
Helmsly proposed the cognitive theory of SZ and stated that perception and memory combine regularly in healthy individuals however fail to do so in SZ sufferers.
SZ breaks down the connection between the two and therefore individuals with SZ are unable to [predict what will happen next as their schemas are not in tact and will be more likely to pay to unimportant aspects of the environment.
Evaluate the cognitive approach
+ Has led to the development of useful cognitive behavioural therapy which has been found useful in managing schizophrenic symptoms such as delusions
+ Supported by Bowie and Harvey as they discovered that cognitive impairments such as lack of attention and working memory are present throughout the course of SZ
= Cause and effect comes into question
= Reductionist approach as it does not consider the biological aspect
= Cannot explain positive symptoms such as affective flattening
What does the genetic explanation suggest about SZ?
The genetic explanation suggests that SZ is transmitted through hereditary means, and that Sz is a polygenic illness (cause through multiple genes)
How does Gottesman 1991 support the genetic explanation of SZ?
Gottesman discovered through meta analysis of 40 twin studies that the concordance rate of SZ in MZ twins is about 48% while in DZ it is 17%. Suggests that there is a genetic component involved.
How can CBT be used to treat SZ?
Cognitive behavioural therapy aims to treat SZ by using the principles of the cognitive explanation by challenging maladaptive thoughts through reality testing and identifying irrational thoughts and considering other possibilities.
For example by asking, It is possibility, but there could be other explanations, how do you know it is the mafia?
Provides a psychological explanation for their symptoms such as their delusions and hallucinations
What is personal therapy and what techniques do they use?
Personal therapy is a CBT approach therapy that involves only the patient and therapist who will recommend techniques to improve SZ symptoms .
For example, distractions from intrusive thoughts, increasing or decreasing social activity to improve low mood, relaxation techniques etc..