psychological explanations

• Family Dysfunction- Schizophrenogenic mother:

  • Fromm-Reichmann (1948) proposed explanation based on accounts from patients about childhoods.
  • noted many spoke of a particular type of parent (schizophrenogenic mother)
  • believed them to be cold, rejecting and controlling and tends to create a family climate of tension and secrecy. leading to paranoid delusions and SZ
• Family Dysfunction- Double-bind theory:

  • Bateson (1972) emphasised role of communication style within a family
  • developing child finds themselves trapped in situations where fear doing the wrong thing but mixed messages about what it is.
  • when they 'get it wrong' child is punished by withdrawal of love leaving them understanding the world as confusing and dangerous causing symptoms like delusions and disorganised thinking- risk factor
• Family Dysfunction- Expressed Emotion:

  • EE is level of emotion (negative) expressed towards a person with SZ by carers.
  • EE contains several elements: verbal criticism, hostitlity and emotional overinvolvement
  • this is a serious source of stress for them- primarily an explanation for relapse in those with SZ
• Family Dysfunction- Evaluation strength: research support

  • indicators of family dysfunction include insecure attachement and exposure to trauma.
  • Review by Read (2005) found adults with SZ most likely to have insecure attachment and 69% women and 59% men have a history of physical/sexual abuse.
  • Morkved (2017) study found most adults with SZ have at least one childhood trauma
• Family Dysfunction- Evaluating limitation: Explanations lack support

  • no evidence to support the importance of traditional family-based theories like the schizophrenogenic mother and double bind.
  • both these theories are based on clinical observation of people with SZ and informal assessments of their mother's personalities
  • meaning family explanations cannot account for the link between childhood trauma and SZ
• Cognitive explanations- Dysfunctional thinking

  • SZ associated with many types of dysfunctional thought processing ( may provide explanations for SZ)
  • SZ characterised by disruption to normal thought processing
  • reduced thought processing in ventral striatum associated with negative symptoms and reduced processing of information in temporal associated with hallucinations
• Cognitive Explanations- Metarepresentation dysfunction

  • Frith (1992) identified two types of dysfunctional thought processes, first is metarepresentation (cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour allowing insight into our own intentions and goals)
  • dysfunction in metarepresentation would disrupt our ability to recognise our own thoughts and actions as being explained by ourselves rather than someone else, would explain hallucinations and hearing voices
• Cognitive Explanations- Central control dysfunction

  • second type of dysfunctional thought process identified by Frith
  • central control dysfunction- cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions
  • speech poverty could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts
• Cognitive Explanation- Evaluation strength: Research Support

  • Stirling (2006) compared performance on a range of cognitive tasks in 30 people with SZ and a control group of 30.
  • tasks included participants having to name the front colours of words and suppress tendency to read aloud
  • As predicted by Firth people with SZ took twice as longer on average- cognitive process impaired
• Cognitive Explanation- Evaluation Limitation: A Proximal Explanation

  • Cognitive explanations for SZ are proximal because they explain what is happening now to produce symptoms. distal explanations focus on what initially caused the symptom.
  • currently unclear how genetic variation or childhood trauma might lead to problems with metarepresentation and central control- partial explanation