Schizophrenia- Interactionist Approach Flashcards
What does the interactionist approach suggest?
Suggests Sz’s developed due to combination of biological, psychological and social factors, known as diathesis-stress model.
What does Meehl’s Original Diathesis Stress Model Suggest?
If a person doesn’t have schizo-gene, then no amount of stress can lead to Sz.
However, if you have the gene, e.g. having a schizophrenogenic mother, this could lead to Sz.
What is Believed Now?
There’s no single schizo-gene, but many genes increase genetic vulnerability to Sz.
Factors other than genes can be diathesis e.g. psychological trauma.
Early and severe trauma e.g. child abuse can seriously affect aspects of brain development, make a person more vulnerable to later stress.
What’s a Modern Definition of Stress?
Anything that risks triggering Sz, not just parenting.
Much of recent research has concerned cannabis use.
In terms of diathesis-stress model cannabis is the stressor as it increases Sz by up to 7 times according to dose, probably due to its interference in dopamine system.
Not everyone develops Sz after smoking cannabis.
Suggests there must be one or more vulnerability factors.
The Diathesis-Stress Model and Treating Schizophrenia
Interactionist model considers biological and psychological factors in development of Sz, therefore it’s compatible with both biological and psychological treatments.
Examples of Treatments of Schizophrenia
In the UK, CBT, family therapy, drug therapy (often combined).
What does Research by Turkington et al argue?
It’s possible to believe in biological causes of Sz and still practice CBT to relieve psychological symptoms, requires adopting interactionist model.
Not possible to adopt a purely biological approach and tell the patient their condition’s purely biological and that there’s no psychological significance to symptoms, and then treat them with CBT.
AO3: Research to Support Interactionist Approach in EXPLAINING Schizophrenia
P: Tienari et al.
E: Followed up 19,000 adopted children in Finland whose mothers had Sz, compared them with control group of adopted children with no genetic risk, child rearing styles of adopted parents observed.
E: Children brought up in families with a lot of conflict and low empathy were more likely to develop Sz, but only in children with genetic vulnerability, not control group.
L: Suggests both genetic vulnerability and family related stress are important in development of Sz.
AO3: Limitation of Interactionist Approach
P: There are individual differences.
E: e.g. two people may have same vulnerability and stressor, but one may not develop Sz.
E: Means we don’t have full understanding of interactionist approach.
L: More research may have to be conducted.
AO3: Research to Support Interactionist Approach in TREATMENT Schizophrenia
P: Tarrier et al.
E: 315 patients randomly allocated to treatment conditions.
E: Found when patients given combined therapy of medication and CBT, they had lower symptoms levels than a control group with just one treatment.
E: Suggests by adopting interactionist approach and using biological and psychological therapies, patients schizophrenic symptoms are treated more effectively.
