Psychological explanations

• What childhood experience is schizophrenia linked to?

  Dysfunctional family
• What is the schizophrenogenic mother hypothesis?


  • Psychodynamic explanation for schizophrenia
  • Blames the mother for being cold, rejecting, and domineering
  • Leads to distrust and delusions
• Who was the first person to place blame on the mother for schizophrenia?

  Fromm-Reichmann
• What does the double-bind hypothesis suggest about parents of schizophrenic offspring?


  They show high communication deviance
• What happens to children who receive contradictory messages from their parents according to Bateson et al.?


  They are more likely to develop schizophrenia
• What is a consequence of children getting it wrong in a double-bind situation?


  They are punished with withdrawal of love
• What are the manifestations of double-bind interactions in children?


  • Prevents coherent construction of reality
  • Leads to symptoms like disorganized thinking
  • Can result in paranoid delusions
• What is expressed emotion (EE) in the context of schizophrenia?


  • Hostile attitude from relatives towards the patient
  • Includes verbal criticism and emotional over-involvement
  • Linked to relapse and stress
• What are the three factors of expressed emotion?


  Verbal criticism, hostility, emotional over-involvement
• What did Brown et al. find regarding families of individuals with schizophrenia?


  They showed high levels of expressed emotion
• What was a significant finding in Sottocontta et al.'s study?


  High communication deviance was seen in mothers
• What is a limitation of the research methods used in family dysfunction studies?


  They often lack internal validity
• What indicators suggest family dysfunction in relation to schizophrenia?


  • Insecure attachment
  • Exposure to childhood trauma
  • Vulnerability to schizophrenia
• Who found that schizophrenia is disproportionately likely to have insecure attachment in adults?

  John Read et al.
• What is a criticism of traditional family-based therapies for schizophrenia?


  They lack empirical support
• What ethical issues arise from research linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia?

  • Leads to parent-blaming
  • Can cause emotional distress for families
  • Raises concerns about the validity of findings
• What do cognitive explanations of schizophrenia focus on?


  • Consequences of biological abnormalities
  • Dysfunctional thought processing
  • Impaired selective attention
• What brain regions are associated with negative and positive symptoms of schizophrenia?


  Ventral striatum for negative symptoms, temporal gyrus for positive symptoms
• What did Stirling et al. (2006) compare in their study?


  Cognitive test performance between schizophrenia patients and non-patients
• What was a significant result from Stirling et al.'s study?


  Patients took twice as long on the Stroop test
• What is a limitation of cognitive explanations for schizophrenia?


  • They only explain proximal origins of symptoms
  • Do not account for genetic or childhood trauma influences
  • Provide partial explanations for the disorder
• How do cognitive explanations relate to biological factors in schizophrenia?


  They suggest a combination of psychological and genetic influences
• What treatment has been shown to be effective for schizophrenia?

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
  • Helps patients challenge irrational thoughts
  • Supported by research from Jauhar et al. (2014)
• What does the cognitive approach suggest about the nature of schizophrenia?


  It is a psychological condition with abnormal cognition
• What is a key challenge in explaining schizophrenia?

  • Difficulty in determining the cause of symptoms
  • Interaction of psychological and biological factors
  • Variability in individual experiences
• What is poor meta representation? 


  The cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour
• What is poor central control? 


  The cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses