AO1

• The Schizophrenogenic Mother is the type of parent that is cold, rejecting and controlling. They tend to create a family climate characterised by tension and secrecy. This leads to distrust that becomes paranoid delusions and ultimately schizophrenia.
• The double bind theory is the emphasised role of communication in a family. The child may be regularly trapped in situations where they are doing the wrong thing, but receive conflicting messages about what counts as wrong. When they get it wrong, they are punished by withdrawal of love. They see the world as confusing and dangerous, leading to disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions.
• Expressed emotion is the level of emotion, mainly negative, expressed towards a patient by their carers. This can be verbal criticism of the person with schizophrenia, occasionally accompanied by violence, hostility towards them, including anger and rejection, emotional involvement in their life, including needless self-sacrifice. These high levels of expressed emotion are a source of stress for the patient. It may be a source of stress that triggers schizophrenia in a person who is genetically vulnerable.
• Dysfunctional thought processing: reduced processing in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms. Sz is characterised by disruption to normal thought processing.
• 2 kinds of dysfunctional thought processing: meta-representation and central control
• Meta-representation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour. This dysfunction disrupts our ability to recognise our thoughts as our own. This could lead to hearing voices and the experience of having thoughts placed in the mind by others, called thought insertion, which is a delusion.
• Central control. The cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while performing deliberative actions. Dysfunction in this leads to disorganized speech and thought disorder.