Schizophrenia : Psychological Explanations For Schizophrenia

Question 1

What does a psychological explanation suggest about how Schizophrenia is developed?

Answer 1

Schizophrenia is due to abnormal family communication styles created by the schizophrenogenic mother, mixed messages due to double-theory, and the stress caused by high levels of expressed emotion.

Question 2

What characterises a schizophrenogenic mother?

Answer 2

A mother who is cold and rejecting

Question 3

How does a schizophrenogenic mother cause the development of schizophrenia?

Answer 3

Due to the SM being cold and rejecting, she creates a tense family climate, lacking honesty which leads to the development of paranoia and anxiety. These feelings manifest themselves in the positive schizophrenic symptom of paranoid delusions.

Question 4

Who suggested double-bind theory?

Answer 4

Bateson

Question 5

What is the double-bind theory?

Answer 5

Suggests that within a family, the child receives mixed messages from both parents about what is right or wrong. The tense atmosphere or controlling parenting style means that the child is unable to clarify these messages or voice their opinions about the unfairness or conflicted messages. When the child makes a mistake, as they often do, they are punished through a withdrawal of love. This means that the child sees the world as unfair and confusing due to this confliction, as reflected in the schizophrenia symptoms of disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions.

Question 6

What is expressed emotion?

Answer 6

Describes the level and type of emotion shown towards the patient by their carer, and is often a significant source of stress for the patient. This means that they are less likely to take their medication or comply with cognitive therapies provided by their hospital or institution, hence being a leading cause of relapse.

Question 7

What are some examples of expressed emotion?

Answer 7

Verbal criticism of the patient, needless ‘sacrifices’ for the patient and violence and hostility.

Question 8

What did Frith suggest contributed to the development of schizophrenia?

Answer 8

'’attention deficit theory’’ suggests that sz is due to a faulty attention system unable to filter preconscious thought and gives too much significance to the information that would usually be filtered therefore overloading the mind. (positive symptoms.)

Question 9

What is metarepresentation?

Answer 9

The ability to identify your own thoughts and actions as your own by paying attention to them.

Question 10

What is dysfunction in metarepresentation associated with?

Answer 10

Faults in metarepresentation results in delusions of control, the feeling that your own actions are being created by an outside force

Question 11

What is Central control?

Answer 11

The cognitive ability to carry out a deliberate action whilst suppressing an automatic response, and is often measured using the Stroop Test.

Question 12

What is the Stroop test?

Answer 12

This test involves identifying the colour of each word, where there is often a discrepancy e.g the word ‘brown’ written in yellow font. Therefore, the automatic response of reading the word must be suppressed, to allow for the identification of the font colour.

Question 13

Fill in the blank: SZ patients often have _________ central control abilities, and so often suffer from ___________ because they cannot suppress the automatic associations that each new word in a sentence brings and so begin to talk _______.

Answer 13

dysfunctional
derailment
off-topic

Question 14

Strengths of psychological explanations

Answer 14

+ Research support of the idea that dysfunctional thought processes are involved in the development of schizophrenia and that faulty central control skills may be responsible for some SZ symptoms. Research found that SZ sufferers made many more mistakes and twice as long to complete the Stroop test task, compared to a healthy control group. Suggests patients with sz have dysfunctional thought processing with faulty central control.

+/- It should be emphasised that dysfunction thought processing can only offer explanations for the indirect, proximal causes of SZ, and not the distal causes meaning that such theories can explain the symptoms but not the origin.

+ Family therapy reduces expressed emotion in families, this has been demonstrated to be an effective intervention and supports the family dysfunction argument.

+ CBT for psychosis can be effective treatment this indicates that cognitive factors are involved in the disorder.

Question 15

Limitations of psychological explanations

Answer 15

• A comparison can be made between biological and psychological explanations for SZ. A large weakness of psych explanations of SZ is that they do not accommodate for biological factors. Since such biological factors can explain the distal origins of SZ, this suggests that psych ex would best be reserved for the proximal causes of SZ, as these causes are more likely to be most affected by psychological factors
• It is socially sensitive to suggest that schizophrenia is caused by the family, parents are already dealing with the difficulty of their relatives behavior. Theorists may be adding additional stress and anxiety by making the family think they are responsible.
• Impossible to demonstrate cause and effect. It could be that schizophrenia has a biological cause such as genetics (Gottesman) and neurotransmitters. Family dysfunction might act as a trigger but it can be argued the basic cause biological.

Question 16

What is family dysfunction?

Answer 16

An explanation of schizophrenia that suggests it is the interpersonal relationships within the family that result in symptoms.

Question 17

What does the cognitive explanation for SZ emphasise?

Answer 17

Emphasise the role of dysfunctional thought processing particularly evident in those who display the characteristic positive symptoms of schizophrenia such as delusions and hallucinations.

Question 18

What evidence is there to support double bind?

Answer 18

Berger found that schizophrenics reported a higher recall of double bind statements by their mothers than non schizophrenics. However this may not be reliable evidence as patient’s recall may be affected by their schizophrenia.

Question 19

What evidence is there that contradicts double bind theory?

Answer 19

Liem measured patterns of parental communication in families with a schizophrenic child and found no difference when compared to normal families.

Hall and Levin analysed data from various previous studies and found no difference between families with and without a schizophrenic member in the degree to which verbal and non-verbal communication were in agreement.

Question 20

Explain the importance of the role of family relationships in the development of schizophrenia (with research evidence)

Answer 20

The importance of family relationships can be seen in an adoption study by Tiernari. The adopted children who had SZ biological parents, were more likely to become ill themselves than children with non-sz bio parents, However, this difference only emerged in situations where the adopted family was rated as disturbed. The illness only manifests itself under appropriate environmental conditions. Genetic vulnerability alone was not sufficient .