psychological explanation

• 🔹 main suggestion of psychological explanations

  schizophrenia can be explained by the environment in which a person is raised
• 🏡 3 parts of family dysfunction

  1. schizophrenogenic mother
  2. double blind theory
  3. expressed emotion
• who came up with the schizophrenogenic mother?

  fromm-reichmann
• 🤰🏼 schizophrenogenic mother

  • mother who is cold, rejecting, controlling and creates a tense, guilt-ridden atmosphere
  • leads to distrust, emotional withdrawal and psychotic thinking
• who came up with the double blind theory?

  bateson et al
• 👩🏼‍🦯 double blind theory

  arises from receiving conflicting messages from caregivers

  • child can't respond appropriately
  • learns communication is confusing and unreliable
  • leads to disordered thinking and paranoia
• 🤗 expressed emotion

  refers to hostility, criticism and emotional over-involvement

  • high EE households place stress on vulnerable individuals
  • increase risk of relapse after hospitalisation

  Brown - patients returning to high EE families had a higher relapse rate
• 🔹 key focus of cognitive explanations

  how mental processes are impaired
• what is dysfunctional thought processing?

  impairments in information processing

  • areas like attention, memory and executive function
• who identified 2 types of dysfunctional thinking?

  frith et al
• 2 types of dysfunctional thinking

  1. metarepresentation
  2. central control
• 💭 metarepresentation dysfunction

  ability to reflect on one's thoughts and the thoughts of others

  • inability to recognise thoughts as self-generated
  • result in hallucinations and delusions of control
• 💭 central control dysfunction

  ability to suppress automatic responses when necessary

  • disorganised speech
  • inappropriate responses to social cues or stimuli
• who studied cognitive explanations of schizophrenia?

  stirling et al
• 📖 stirling et al

  compared 30 schizophrenic patients with controls on the stroop test

  • schizophrenic participants took longer and made more errors
  • impaired central control
• ✅ strength of family dysfunction - support

  supporting evidence linking childhood trauma

  • Read et al - 69% of female schizophrenic patients had experienced physical or sexual abuse in childhood
  • dysfunctional family environments contribute to development
  • increases credibility
• ❌ limitation of family dysfunction - validity

  supporting evidence relies on retrospective data

  • report childhood experiences after diagnosis which could be influenced by memory distortion or symptoms
  • possibility of recall bias
  • concerns about the accuracy
• ❌ limitation of family dysfunction - blame

  ethical and practical issues

  • double-blind theory and schizophrenogenic mother places responsibility on parents
  • cause guilt and strain family relationships
  • reduces willingness to seek family-based interventions
• ✅ strength of cognitive explanation - application

  usefulness in developing treatments

  • CBTp helps identify and reframe faulty thinking
  • studies show it is effective in reducing positive symptoms
  • practical application
• ❌ limitation of cognitive explanations - biology

  fails to consider biological explanations

  • don't account for dopamine dysregulation or genetic vulnerability
  • oversimplify a multifactorial disorder
  • reductionist
• ✅ strength of cognitive explanation - support

  empirical evidence

  • Stirling et al - took longer on the stroop test showing impaired central control
  • supports idea of cognitive dysfunction in attention and executive function
  • increases scientific credibility