cognitive a03

• One strength of the cognitive approach is by looking ito these faulty thinking processes psychologists have been able to identify successful therapies such as CBT to help with the severity fo schizophrenia in aptients 

  In CBT patients are encouraged to evaluate the content of their delusions and hallucinations and consider ways in which they might test the validity of their faulty beliefs. The NICE review found evidence that CBT was more effective than antipsychotic medication in reducing symptom severity and improving levels of social functioning. Therefore the success of CBT highlights the validity of the theory that cognitive aspects cause schizophrenia. 

  However although effective it only reduces severity of the symptoms and doesn’t completely resolve the disorder suggesting there must be otehr factors other than cognitive
• The cognitive approach does not provide treatments that can cure schizophrenia, but instead it helps to make schizophrenia more manageable. For example, Trower et al (2004) found that CBT did not actually reduce or get rid of hallucinations, but helped patients to be feel less threatened by them. This means that treatments that are based on cognitive explanations cannot completely address all symptoms and therefore there must be otehr factors cauding symptoms this is A significant weakness of psychological explanations for SZ is that it only deals adequately with one aspect of the disorder Since such biological factors can explain the distal origins of schizophrenia therefore they must be considered
• this problem can be adressed with the integrated model of schizophrenia(howes and murray). They argued the early vulnerability factors (e.g. genes, birth complications, etc) together with significant social stressors (e.g. Social adversity), sensitises the dopamine system, causing it to increase the levels of dopamine. Biased cognitive processing of this increased dopamine activity results in paranoia and hallucinations, and eventually development of psychosis explaining how multiple factors can interact to cause the disorder which is more holistic and sufficient explanation
• AO3 - Cognitive model of schizophrenia - Sarin and Wallin (2014)

  Reviewed recent research evidence relating to the cognitive model of schizophrenia. They found supporting evidence for the claim that positive symptoms of schizophrenia have their origins in faulty cognition. For example, delusional patients were found to show various biases in their information processing, such as jumping to conclusions and lack of reality testing. Likewise, schizophrenic individuals with hallucinations were found to have impaired self monitoring and also tend to experience their own thoughts as voices. support for cog