Schizophrenia: Psychological Explanations Flashcards
what’s are the types of psychological explanation for SZ?
family dysfunction and cognitive explanation.
what’s the schizophrenogenic mother?
Fromm-Reichmann noted that many of her patients spoke of a type of parent. the mother is cold, rejecting and controlling creating a tense family climate. this leads to distrust that develops into delusions.
what’s the double bind theory?
Bateson emphasised on role of communication. the child may find themselves entrapped and fear doing the wrong thing but receives mixed messages. when they get it wrong they are punished by the withdrawal of love. they see the world as dangerous and confusing.
what’s expressed emotions (EE)?
type and level of negative emotion displayed towards SZ patient by their carers. verbal criticism, hostility and emotional over-involvement in the SZ patient’s life. these high levels of emotion are sources of stress for the patient and can cause them to relapse.
what’s the cognitive explanation?
the role of mental processing. SZ is a disruption to normal thought processing. Frith identifed 2 types of dysfunctional thought processes: metarepresentation and central control.
what’s metarepresentation?
the ability to reflect on thoughts/behaviours, allow insight into our intentions and interpret actions of others. dysfunction would disrupt our ability to recognising actions to be our own or someone elses.
what’s central control?
the ability to suppress automatic responses when carrying out an action. disorganised speech and thought disorder is a result of this dysfunction.
what’s research support of family dysfunction as a risk factor?
Read reviewed 46 child abuse studies and concluded 69% of SZ women had a history of physical or sexual abuse, 59% for men. adults with insecure attachment were more likley to develop SZ. however there is an issue of validity as patients may have distorted recall of childhood experience.
what’s weak evidence for family based explanation?
no evidence support schizophrogenic mother or double-bind. both were basd on clinical observation of patients. it also leads to parent blaming as parents who have to experience their child developing SZ underwent further trauma by being blamed. this adds insult to injury
what’s strong evidence for dysfunctioning information processing?
Stirling compared 30 patients with 18 control on cognitive tasks including the Stroop test. the SZ patients took twice as long to complete the tasks. an issue of cognitive processing is the links between symptoms and faulty cognitions are clear, but the origin is still unclear.
