schizophrenia🫂 (psychological explanations)

Question 1

what is the psychological explanation for sz?

Answer 1

focus on psychological environment eg family, and its role of making individuals particularly vulnerable sz.

others have focused more on the mind of the sufferer and emphasises role of abnormal cognition in the experience of sz

Question 2

what is family dysfunction?

Answer 2

attempt to link sz to childhood and adult experiences of living in dysfunctional family

Question 3

FD-

what is the schizophrenogenic mother/what does it mean?

Answer 3

means sz causing.

Question 4

symptoms of a sz mom?

Answer 4

old, neglecting, controlling, + tends to create a family climate characterised by tension and secrecy

Question 5

what do the sz mom cause?

Answer 5

distrust, which later develops into paranoid delusions and ultimately SZ

Question 6

FD-

what is the double blind theory?

what does this communication create?

Answer 6

child feels trapped in situations when they think they’re doing wrong. they receive mixed messages about this and its unable to comment on fairness of situation/seek clarification. hence why communication is important and can contribute to sz.

a risk factor

Question 7

what happens when child gets punished?

Answer 7

love is withdrawn

Question 8

how is disorganised thinking caused?

Answer 8

bc the child is confused thus its reflected in disorganised thinking + paranoid delusions

Question 9

FD-

what is expressed emotion?

Answer 9

lvl of emotion, mainly negative expressed towards patient by their carer/parents

Question 10

what are the 3 severe elements in EE?

Answer 10

verbal criticism/sometimes violence
hostility towards patient-anger& rejection
emotional over involvement in patients life

Question 11

what do high lvls of EE cause in patient?/ what is this an explanation for?

Answer 11

serious stress in patient, which is an explanation for relapse in sz patients

Question 12

what does stress imply?

Answer 12

that the stress may be the trigger onset of sz in vulnerable patients due to genetic makeup

Question 13

what are cognitive explantations?

Answer 13

focus on role of mental processes.

Question 14

CE

what is sz associated w?

Answer 14

several types of abnormal info processing which can provide possible explanations for sz.

Question 15

what is associated w negative symptoms?

Answer 15

reduced processing in the ventral striatum

Question 16

what’s associated w hallucinations?

Answer 16

reduced processing of info in temporal and cingulate gyri.

Question 17

what does lower than usual lvl of info processing suggest?

Answer 17

cognition is likely to be impaired

Question 18

CE-

who identified 2 types of dysfunctional thought processing that could underlie some symptoms?

Answer 18

frith et al

Question 19

CE-

what is central control?

Answer 19

cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions instead

Question 20

what could arise from inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts?

Answer 20

disorganised speech n thought disorder

Question 21

what do ppl w sz tend to experience?

Answer 21

derailment of thoughts an spoken sentences bc each word triggers associations, an the person can’t suppress automatic responses to these

Question 22

CE-

what is metarepresentation?

what does it allow us todo?

what would dysfunction do?

Answer 22

cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts & behaviour

interpret others actions

disrupt our ability to recognise our actions + thoughts as being carried out by ourselves than someone else. this would explain hallucination of voices and delusions like thought insertion.

Question 23

AO3- ❌

why is there weak evidence for family based explanations?

what is the problem w this?

Answer 23

despite supporting evidence that poor childhood experiences are associated with adult sz, there’s little to support the sz mother or double-blind.

a problem with this is its led to blaming parents. parents who have already suffered at seeing their kids descent in sz are who are likely to bare lifelong responsibility for their care, underwent trauma by receiving blame for condition.

the shift from hospital to community care in 1980s may be one of the factors leading to the decline of sz mom and double-blind theories- parents no longer tolerated them.

Question 24

AO3-✅❌

why is there support for family dysfunction as a risk factor?

what’s an example of this?

why does this evidence share a weakness?

what does this weakness create?

what does this mean?

Answer 24

evidence suggests that difficult family relationships in child r associated w increased risk of sz in adulthood.

read et al reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and sz and concluded that 69% of adult women in-patients with a diagnosis for sz had a history of physical/sexual abuse or both in childhood. for men it was 59%. adults with insecure attachments to primary caregiver also more likely to have sz.

info from childhood experiences was gathered after development of symptoms, and the sz may have distorted their recall from childhood.

a problem for validity

there is a prospective amount of evidence linking family dysfunction to sz but not a huge amount and results have been inconsistent.

Question 25

AO3-

Why is there strong evidence for dysfunctional info processing?

what did Stirling do?

what did he find?

what is there a problem with?

Answer 25

support for the idea that info is processed differently in the mind of the person with sz

compared 30 ppl w sz diagnosis and 18 controls on a range of cognitive tasks including the stroop test, where ppts name ink colours of colour words, surpressing the impulse to read the words in order todo task.

that ppl with sz took 2x as long to name ink colours as ppl in the control group.

cognitive explanations for sz. links between symptom and faulty cognition r clear but it don’t tell us anything about how the origins of those cognitions or of sz. cognitive theories explain proximal causes of sz ie what causes current symptoms but not the distal causes.