psychological explanation for schizoprenia

• schizophrenogenic mother type of mother that is cold, rejecting, and controlling and creates tension within the family leading to secrecy and distrust which can develop a particular type of paranoid delusions
• double bind communication where one person sends two contradictory messages at once leading to disorganised thinking and delusions
• expressed emotion can involve verbal criticism, hostility, and emotional overinvolvement which increases stress levels which is an explanation for relapse. it ca n also trigger sz in people who already vulnerable from previous trauma or genetic vulnerability
• -socially sensitive as parent blames especially mothers. for a parent already having to watch their child experience symptoms of sz and take responsibility for their care and being blamed adds insults to the injury.In comparison, the biological approach does not have this same issue as it argues for a physiological cause of the disorder, which is out of the control of the individual. This removes any kind of ‘blame’. As a result, biological explanations may be favoured by researchers and patients alike.
• There is very little research support for schizophrenogenic mothers and double bind theory. Most support comes from clinical observations of patients and informal assessment of their mother’s personality. This is a problem for a number of reasons. Clinical observations are notes made by clinicians (psychiatrists, psychologists) and may be open to bias as they are not checked for inter-rater reliability against other clinicians. In addition, the disorganised thinking and delusions may lead to biased descriptions of parents, for which there is no way of checking their accuracy.
• + research support family dysfunction may lead to sz . Read 2005 adults with sz more likely to have insecure attachment. 69% of women and 59% of men with sz have a history of physical or sexual abuse. also, Morkved 2017 most adults with sz reported at least one childhood trauma, mostly abuse. consistency of results increases reliability of research linking early family experiences to sz may validity problems because as rely on personal accounts from sufferers which may be inaccurate. no. of reasons time passed between childhood and adulthood, and disorganised thinking.
• + research support expressed emotions increase risk of relapse. Hogarty et al 1986 found that when relatives were trained to reduce EE, relapses decreased. Leff & Vaughn 1985 found that reducing EE reduced hospitalisation rates. however, these studies do not prove causation as correlation does not equal causation. It could be argued that those with higher EE are less able to cope with the illness so are more likely to need hospitalisation. Also, the training given to relatives was quite intensive and expensive so cannot be applied easily to all families. Therefore, generalisability is low.
• dysfucntional thinking focuses on the mental processes whuch are disrupted therefore a decrease in thought process in the ventral striatum and cingulate gyri are associated with hallucinations
• metarepresentation dysfunction frifth 1992 cognitive ability to reflect on own thoughts allows insight on personal goals. dysfucntion in cognitive ability explains hallucinations and delusions
• central control dysfunction unable to suppress automatic responses. experience of derailment of thoughts
• +evidence for centeral control dysfunction. stirling 2006 compared the performance on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 ppl sz and 30 w/o. task included the stoop task so they would have to suppress tendency to read the colour of the words out loud. As predicted by frifths centeral control theory. ppl with sz took twice as long to read the words out. therefore ppl with sz has impaired cog ability
• + evidence for central control dysfunction. fletcher et al 2004 used PET scans to compare brain activity during a word association test. participants had to say the first thing that came into their head when shown an image. Results showed increased activation in the left prefrontal cortex (PFC) in controls but not in patients with Sz. This suggests that people with Sz lack the capacity to inhibit irrelevant information and focus attention on relevant stimuli. this supports Frith's theory of central control dysfunction
• -cog explanation only proximal as explains what is the current cause of the symptoms, and distal explanation explains the initial cause of the symptoms. possible distal explain would be genetic or family dysfunction. it is unclear how genetic variations or childhood trauma leads to metarepresentation
• bio explanation much more favourable as practical as genetic and drug therapy has been derived for this explanation. the practical explanations decrease symptoms and increase quality of life. by doing this it allows for individuals to engage in psychological therapies such as cbt much more meaningfully as connection with reality is less impaired therefore they have control over thoughts. overall by having both explanations it allows for distal and proximal explanation