Psychological explanations

• Family dysfunction: Abnormal processes within a family such as poor family communication, cold parenting and high levels of expressed emotion. These may be risk factors for both developmental and maintenance of schizophrenia.
• Cognitive explanations: Explanations that focus on mental processes such as thinking, language and attention.
• Dysfunctional thought processing: Information processing that does not represent reality accurately and produces undesirable consequences.
• The schizophrenogenic mother:

  • Fromm-Reichmann (1948) noted many patients spoke about a certain type of parent who is cold and rejecting.
  • This creates a family climate which is characterized by tension and secrecy.
  • This can lead to paranoid delusions and schizophrenia.
• Double-bind theory:

  • Bateson et al (1972) emphasized the role of a communication style within the family.
  • A child receives mixed messages about what they are doing wrong and are unable to comment on the unfairness of the situation.
  • When they get it wrong they are punished with a withdraw of love.
  • This make them believe the world is confusing and dangerous.
  • This was made clear that it is only a risk factor of developing schizophrenia.
• Expressed emotion elements:

  • Verbal criticism of the patient, occasionally accompanied by violence.
  • Hostility towards the patient, including anger and rejection.
  • Emotional overinvolvement in the life of the patient, including needless self-sacrifice.
• Expressed emotion is the level of emotion in a particular negative emotion. Expressed towards a patient by their cares who are often family.
• High levels of expressed emotion are a serious source of stress for the patient. This stress could trigger the onset of schizophrenia in a person who is already vulnerable.
• Dysfunctional thinking:

  • Schizophrenia is characterized by disruption to normal thought processing.
  • Reduced thought processing in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms, while reduced processing in the temporal lobe are associated with hallucinations.
• Metarepresentation dysfunction:

  • Frith et al identified two kinds of dysfunctional thought processes, the first being metarepresentation.
  • This is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behavior.
  • Disfunction causes us to be unable to recognize our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves.
• Central control dysfunction:

  • Firth et al also identified issues with the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions.
  • Speech poverty could be formed by the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts.
• Family dysfunction Evaluation (Strength)

  • Research support- Read et al (2005) found adults with schizophrenia are likely to have insecure attachments and many have a history of abuse.
  • This strongly suggests family dysfunction makes people more vulnerable to schizophrenia.
• Family dysfunction Evaluation (limitation)

  • Explanation lack support- there is poor evidence base for any of the explanations.
  • There is no evidence to support importance of traditional family-based theories such as double-bind.
  • There is no systematic evidence for the link between childhood trauma and schizophrenia.
• Cognitive explanations Evaluation (Strength)

  • Research support- Stirling et al compared performance on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with schizophrenia and found people with schizophrenia took longer.
  • This shows how the cognitive processing of people with schizophrenia is impaired.
• Cognitive explanations Evaluation (limitation)

  • They only explain the proximal origins of symptoms, they explain what is happening now to produce symptoms.
  • This mean cognitive explanations are only partial explanations.