Psychological Explanations

• The psychological explanations for schizophrenia are family dysfunction and dysfunctional thinking
• Family Dysfunction is a psychodynamic approach where abnormal processes within a family may be risk factors for development of schizophrenia
• Family dysfunction includes the schizophrenogenic mother, double-bind theory, expressed emotion
• The Schizophrenogenic mother is a cold, rejecting & controlling parent which tends to create a tense & secretive family climate
• The Schizophrenogenic mother leads to distrust and delusions
• Double-bind theory is the result of a child's exposure to conflicting messages in their family environment
• Double-bind theory leads to an understanding of the world as confusing & dangerous, disorganised thinking, and paranoid delusions
• Expressed Emotion is a high level of negative emotion expressed to the patient by their carers e.g. verbal criticism, hostility, emotional overinvolvement
• Expressed Emotion is a source of stress which can trigger onset or cause relapse
• There is evidence for the link between schizophrenia and insecure attachment e.g. Read et.al. which supports family dysfunction
• Read et.al. found that adults with schiozphrenia are disproportionately likely to have insecure attachment (type C or D)
• Read et.al. found that 69% of women with schizophrenia have a history of physical or sexual abuse
• A limitation of family dysfunction is that there is a lack of evidence for specific explanations
• Family dysfunction theories can lead to parent-blaming which is socially sensitive as they already to have to care for the child
• Dysfunctional Thinking is a cognitive approach that suggests information processing in schizophrenics does not accurately represent reality so produces undesirable consequences
• Metarepresentation Dysfunction is issues with cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviours which allows insight into our own intentions and allows us to interpret the actions of others
• Frith et.al. identified dysfunctional thinking as being made up of metarepresentation dysfunction and central control dysfunction
• Central Control Dysfunction is issues with cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses when performing deliberate actions
• Central Control Dysfunction leads to speech poverty and thought disorder
• Metarepresentation Dysfunction leads to hallucination and delusions
• There is evidence for central control dysfunction e.g. John Stirling
• Stirling et.al. found that when performing the Stroop task schizophrenics took over twice as long on average
• The Stroop Task involves naming font-colours of colour-words
• Dysfunctional Thinking theories are limited as they only provide a proximal explanation
• Proximal explanations explain what causing the symptoms now
• Distal explanation explain what caused the disorder in the first place
• Family Dysfunction theories provide a distal explanation