sz - Psychological explanations for schizophrenia Flashcards
explain the double bind theory in terms of family dysfunction?
Double Bind theory – Gregory Bateson et al. (1956) (NOT BLIND)
The double bind theory suggests that children who frequently receive CONTRADICTORY messages from their parents are more likely to develop schizophrenia. For example, If a mother tells her son that she loves him, yet at the same time turns her head away in disgust, the other child receives conflicting messages about their relationship on different communication levels:
Affection on the verbal level
Animosity on the non-verbal level
The child’s ability to respond to the mother is incapacitated by such contradictions because one message effectively invalidates the other. Prolonged exposure to such interactions prevents the development of an internally coherent construction of reality; in the long run, this manifests itself as typically schizophrenic symptoms such as flattening affect, delusions and hallucinations, incoherent thinking and speaking, and in some cases paranoia.
explain Contradictory evidence to double bind theory?
Contradictory evidence by Liem (1974) and Hall (1980) found that there was no difference in patterns of parental communication in families with schizophrenic child and found no difference compared with normal families.
supporting evidence for double bind theory?
Read et al. (2005) reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and found that 69% of adult women in-patients with a diagnosis of SZ had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both in childhood. For men the figure was 59%. TST
Contradictory messages, sometime they are being praised and then other times they are being abused. This supports the double bind theory as it suggests that contradictory messages may be linked with SZ.
explain high degree of expressed emotions as family dysfunction explanation?
Another family variable associated with SZ is negative emotional climate, or more generally, a high degree of expressed emotions. In particular this is negative emotion, expressed to a patient by their carer. For example, verbal criticism, hostility towards the patient including anger or aggression and emotional involvement such as needless self sacrifice. This is primarily an explanation for relapse, however has also been suggested as a source of stress that could trigger the onset of SZ in someone who is genetically vulnerable
How does this link to the diathesis stress model?
Although they may have a genetic vulnerability they require an environmental stimulus to trigger SZ
study into high expressed emotion families and relapse?
Kavanagh (1992) Reviewed 26 studies of expressed emotion, finding the mean relapse rate for SZ who returned to live with high expressed emotion families was 48% , compared with 21% who went to live with low expressed emotion families
This shows that high expressed emotion families acts as an environmental stimulus for relapse in SZ because The relapse rate in highly expressed emotion families is over double that of low expressed emotion families.
Briefly outline family dysfunction as an explanation for schizophrenia.
The double bind theory suggests that children who frequently receive CONTRADICTORY messages from their parents are more likely to develop schizophrenia. In addition high negative expressed emotion may be an explanation for relapse.
Cognitive explanations including dysfunctional thought processing
what are cognitive biases?
Cognitive biases refer to selective attention. The idea of cognitive biases has been used to explain some of the behaviours which have been traditionally regarded as symptoms of schizophrenia:
Delusions: the most common delusion that people diagnosed with schizophrenia report is that others are trying to harm or kill them – delusions of persecution. Research suggests that these delusions are associated with specific biases in reasoning about and explaining social situations. Many people who experience feelings of persecution have a general tendency to assume that other people cause the things that go wrong with their lives.
Auditory hallucinations: there is evidence that auditory hallucinations – hearing voices where none exist – are related to cognitive biases. To some extent, people see themselves in terms of their social networks – their network of social relationships. Some people tend to see themselves as powerless compared to other, more powerful individuals in their social networks. This bias can lead them to see themselves as worthless, useless and incompetent. Most people experience an inner voice when thinking in words – for example, when deciding what to do or when struggling with a problem. There is evidence that some people who experience auditory hallucinations mistake their inner voice for speech from an external source. Those who see themselves as powerless sometimes hear voices saying ‘he’s useless’. The status and power gap they see between themselves and others is mirrored in the relationship they have with the ‘voice’. The bigger gap, the more powerful the ‘voice’ and the more control it has.
explain the study to distinguish between SZ patients and non-patient controls? include evaluation
Stirling (2006) compared 30 patients with SZ to 18 non-patient controls, on cognitive tasks including the stroop test. Patients took twice as long to name ink colours than controls
This tells us that SZ have different and slower cognitive processing.
However
It might not be that the cognitive processing is a cause of SZ and instead the symptoms of SZ are causing a slowdown of cognitive processing through the form of hallucinations
explain the issue with gathering information on SZ?
Information about childhood experiences were gathered AFTER the development of the symptoms of SZ, why is this a problem with validity?
A lot of the information gathered abput the childhood of SZ is from self-report rather than actual scientific methods and asking a SZ about their childhood may have validity problems.
explain the issue of cause and effect with SZ?
Having someone with SZ can be stressful for a family
Therefore the high negative emotions may be as a result of living with a SZ rather than the cause of SZ
Why don’t all dysfunctional families have people with SZ?
explain the issue of ethics for results of family research into sz?
Socially sensitive; that family dysfunction can be a cause for relapse, may cause distress to family
what is a strength of the psychological explanation for sz?
See therapy - CBT
