schizophrenia: psycholgical explanations ao1 Flashcards
2 types of psychological explanations
Family dysfunction
dysfunctional thinking
Family dysfunction
Refers to abnormal communication patterns and relationships within families
- double bind
- high ee
- schiz mother
Psychodynamic model
According to Freud child raised in dysfunctional family may regress back to id stage of development
Bizarre thoughts and behaviour represent egos attempt to regain control of psyche
This occurs perhaps bc of schizophrenogenic family or mothers
who coined the term schizophrenogenic mother
reichman
schizophrenogenic mother means
schizophrenia causing
traits of schizophrenogenic mother and what does it lead to
overprotective yet cold rejecting controlling
causes tension and secrecy in the family
leads to paranoid delusions and distrust leading to schiz
Laing and esterson 1970
Schiz results from an attempt to deal with confusion and unhappiness caused by an individuals family and environment
Symptom of a dysfunctional family not individual pathology
3 types of marital issues
Marital schism
Marital skew
Conflict causes stress
Explain marital schism
Conflict and disorder between parents
One is always trying to undermine the other
They both compete to win the affection of other family members
Explain marital skew
Balance of power in family is biased toward a domaint parent
Children are encouraged to follow that parents direction
The other parent is submissive
Explain conflict causes stress
Schizophrenia develops as a way of escaping conflict
Double bind theory - Bateson 1972
In a double bind situation is given 2 contradictory signals by another person
Eg semone hugs you then tells you they hate you - children receiving mixed messages are more likely to develop schiz
- theyre trapped and cannot seek clarification
- getting it wrong means withdrawl of love
- created an understanding if the world which is dangerous and confusing
- leads to paranoid delusions and disorganised thinking
Counter evidence to double bind theory
Liem et al 1974
Compared communication patterns in families with and without a schiz member
Abnormality in parental communication was a response to the schiz symptoms not vice versa
Therefore it’s difficult to establish which comes first
Bateson was critiqued for or confirmatory bias
Expressed emotion theory suggests
High expressed emotion (anger hostility) is more likely to cause stress than an environment of low expressed emotion (support tolerance and understanding)
high ee characteristics and what it can cause
verbal critiscm
hostility anger rejection
emotional over involvent
high ee can trigger ..
schiz episode in someone vunerable (eg due to their genes) or relapse
What did Vaughn and leff 1976 find about EE
High EE families - 51% relapse - more than 35h of contact - 69% relapse
Contact for less 35h had 28% relapse
Low EE families - 13% relapse
What did brown 1972 find
Patients w schiz who returned home with high EE were more likely to relapse compared to those who returned to families with low EE
Is expressed emotion a cause or maintaining of schiz
Maintains
Dysfync family is the cause - bateson 1956
Cognitive explanations
Some agreement
With the biological perspective
Brain mechanisms may underpin symptoms of schizophrenia
This may be due to genetic vulnerability
The cog approach suggests that the symptoms develop because the patient tries to make sense of their unusual sensory experiences
Who had the theory of dysfunctional thinking
friths et al
frith et al 1992 identified 2 types of dysfunctional thought processing what are they
- metarepresentation
- central control
3 cognitive deficits in schizophrenia
- inability to focus attention
- failure to utilise schema
- failure to understand context of situation
Explain inability to focus attention
Cannot focus on one thing at one time
Senses overloaded with external stimuli
Lead to +ve symptoms
Disorganised though and speech
-ve symptoms
Speech poverty
Explain failure to utilise schemas
Helmsley 1933 suggests that schizophrenics do not use schemas so each situation treated as novel which can be overwhelming confusijf and exhausting
Internal thoughts aren’t recognised as coming from memory and so are attributed to external sources (explains auditory hallucinations)
Explain meta representation
the ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour allowing insight into our own intentions and of others
Dysfunction in this would distrupt our ability to recognise our own thoughts as being carried out by ourselves
explaining auditory hallucination and thought insertion
eg their thoughts are being put into their mind from somebody else
Explain central control
Cognitive Ability to suppress automatic responses whilst we perform deliberate actions instead
Disorganised speech and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts
Outline psychological explanations for schizophrenia (6)
Research into psychological explanations for schizophrenia focus on the role of the family (family dysfunction) and the role of faulty information processes (cognitive explanations) as risk factors for developing schizophrenia.
One theory of family dysfunction emphasises the impact of negative expressed emotion. This refers to a high level of negative emotion expressed towards the patient by the carers who are often family members. For example verbal criticism, physical violence, hostility, anger and rejection. This is a serious source of stress for the patient which can lead to relapse in patients with schizophrenia, but can also cause the onset of schizophrenia in people who are already vulnerable, for example, due to their genetic makeup.
In terms of cognitive explanations, Frith et al. (1992) suggested faulty meta-representation and central control may be the cause of schizophrenia. Central control, refers to our ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions. Symptoms like speech poverty, speech disorder and thought disorder could result from this inability because each thought triggers other thoughts and speech. For example, people with schizophrenia tend to experience what is known as the derailment of thoughts because each word triggers associations and the person cannot suppress automatic responses to these.
