Psychological explanation for SZ

• What are the 2 psychological explanations for SZ?

  Family dysfunction and cognitive explanation
• What is family dysfunction?

  An explanation of SZ that suggest it is the interpersonal relationships within the family that result in symptoms
• What are the 3 types of family dysfunction?

  Schizophrenogenic mother, expressed emotion, double blind theory
• What is the schizophrenogenic mother`?

  A psychodynamic theory that suggests people with SZ get their paranoid delusions as a result of influence of a cold, rejecting and controlling mother and passive father. She creates an atmosphere of stress, tension and secrecy in the family. This atmosphere triggered psychotic thinking
• What is the double blind theory?

  Suggests the child gets mixed messages and feels unable to do the correct thing. For example being told they need to be more independent but being overprotected and criticised when they try be independent. Bateson suggests this results in disorganised thinking and paranoia
• What is expressed emotion?

  Verbal interactions the caregiver has with the person with SZ
• Expressed Emotion 1: Exaggerated involvement, indicating the sufferer is a burden via self sacrifice
• Expressed emotion 2: Criticism and control of the sufferers behaviour
• Expressed emotion 3: Hostility towards the sufferer
• What are the consequences of the double blind theory?

  Child is unable to respond appropriately as they distrust their own thoughts and feelings. This leads to belief that they live in a dangerous and confusing world which encourages paranoid delusions and disorganised thinking
• What are cognitive explanations for schizophrenia based on?

  The assumption that the ability to process thought is dysfunctional
• Who suggested the attention deficit theory?


  Firth
• What does the attention deficit theory suggest?


  Schizophrenia is due to a faulty attention system unable to filter pre conscious thought and gives too much significance to information that would usually be filtered, therefore overloading the mind
• What does the faulty attention system lead to?

  Positive symptoms
• Firth also suggests the ability to suppress and override automatic actions and speech and make deliberate actions to achieve goals (central control) is sometimes faulty in schizophrenic patients
• Example of faulty central control: seeing a door handle, there may be an autonomic urge to open the door. Schizophrenics could have difficulty resisting this urge and have difficulty explaining the reason, resulting in delusions
• What can also be explained by the inability to resist expressing automatic thoughts?

  Speech derailment
• What is meta-representation?


  The ability to identify your own thoughts and actions as your own by paying attention to them
• Faults in meta-representation leads to what?

  Delusions of control
• Who used neuroscience studies to support the cognitive explanation?

  Firth
• Firth’s study (cognitive explanation)


  30 schizophrenic patients with various symptoms had PET scans. These scans indicated a reduction in blood flow in the frontal cortex with patients with negative symptoms like avolition the inability to suppress automatic thoughts
• PET scans also showed increased activity in an area of the temporal lobe responsible for the retrieval of memories with patients with reality distortion. This suggests that there are biological differences in schizophrenics brain regions associated with eh theorised cognitive processes
• What did the Stroop test involve?


  NAming the ink colours on words without saying the word. This is difficult as there is a desire to say the word that needs to be controlled