Schizophrenia- Psychological explanations Flashcards
Who proposed the double blind theory?
Bateson
What is the double blind theory? How does it lead to schizophrenia?
-Child is regularly trapped in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing but received conflicting messages about what is wrong or right
-Cannot express their feelings about the unfairness of the situation
-When they get it wrong (often) the child is punished by withdrawal of love
-Conflicting family communication
-This teaches them that the world is dangerous and confusing
-This leads to disorganised thinking ,delusions and paranoia
What is expressed emotion?
-The level of empotion (mainly negative) expressed to the SZ paitent
What does expressed emotion include?
-Verbal critiscm of the paitent
-Hostility towards them
-Emotional over involvement in their life
What can high EE lead to a relapse?
Causes high levels of stress for the patient
What can low EE produce?
Low EE is more likely to produce an atmosphere of of warmth, support and care that will help to facilitate recovery and prevent relapse
How is the schizophrenogenic mother an explanation for the development of SZ?
-Reichmann suggested the idea that, negative, dysfunctional mother is a major (if not the) factor in her child’s development of schizophrenia
-SM is cold, rejecting and controlling and creates a family atmosphere which is characterised by tension and secrecy
-This toxic behaviour from the SM is theorised to lead to distrust, paranoia delusions
What does the SM explanation also depend on?
on the passive, ineffectual nature/behaviour of the father as another key factor
Why is SM a psychodynamic explanation?
based on a patient’s current internal conflict having its roots in aversive childhood experience
What is dysfunctional thought processing?
-Cognitive habits/beliefs that cause the individual to evaluate information inappropriately
-Lower levels of info processing in some areas of the brain suggest cognition is impaired
-Reduced processing in the ventral stratium is associated with negative sypmtoms
-A sz patent may be unable to distinguish between the natural ‘inner voice’ that everyone is aware of . and what they perceive to be a voice or voices speaking to them which exists outside of themselves
What is metarepresentation?
-the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour and to know what one’s intentions, goals and motivations are
-The ability to interpret the behaviour of others and to understand that another person’s actions/thoughts are particular to that person and not to oneself
Explain how dysfunction of central control leads to speech poverty
-Derailment of thoughts +spoken sentences because each word triggers automatic association that they cannot supress
What is central control?
-Cognitive ability to supress automatic responses while performing deliberate actions
Give an evaluation point (Gender bias-SM)
-The schizophrenogenic mother theory clearly shows gender bias as it suggests that women/mothers play a key, destructive role in the onset of schizophrenia in a child (alpha bias as it assumes key differences based on gender)
-The concept of the SM is a dangerous stereotype and a product of ‘blame-culture’ which has no basis in scientific fact and which may have caused a great deal of harm over the years (Neill, 1990)
-SM is purely a risk factor and not a direct cause
-Other factors such EE or cognitive explanations will also contribute
Give an evaluation point (individual differences in EE)
-Not all patients who live in high EE families relapse and not all patients who live in low EE homes avoid relapse
-Reasearch has found individual differences in stress response to high EE
-Altorfer 1/4 of paitents showed no physiological responses to stresful responses from their relatves
-Vunerability to EE may be psychologically based
-Lebell- how paitents appraise the behaviour of their relatives is important
-In cases where high EE behaviours are not perceived as being negative or stressful, paitents can do well regardless of how the family enviroment is objectivley rated
-Shows that not all paitent are equally vunerable to high levels of EE within the family environment
Give an evaluation point (validity of cognitive explanations)
-There may be issues with the validity of cognitive explanations
-For example a person’s thought processing is likely to be highly subjective, regardless of whether they have schizophrenia or not, so it is difficult to know how to judge and asses what is ‘dysfunctional’ or ‘biased’ when it comes to idiosyncratic cognitions
Give an evaluation point (sucess of cognitive therapies)
-Claim that symptoms of SZ originate from faulty cognition is reinforced by the success of cognitive based therapies for SZ
-The effectiveness of CBTp was demonstrated by NICE in a review for treatments of SZ
-Review found consistent evidence in comparison to treatment with antipsychotics CBT was more effctive in reducing symptom severity + improving levels of social functioning
-CBTp aims to ientify illogcal deduction and conclusions and then rationalise these
-Supports the view that faulty cognitions have an important casual influence in the devolpment of SZ
