Interactionist Approach to schizophrenia AO3

• +Support for dual role of vulnerability and stress. Tienari studied children adopted away from mothers diagnosed with schizophrenia. The adoptive parents' parenting styles were assessed and compared with a control group of adoptees with no genetic risk. A child-rearing style with high levels of criticism and conflict and low levels of empathy was implicated in the development of schizophrenia but only for children with a high genetic risk. This shows that a combination of genetic vulnerability and family stress leads to increased risk of schizophrenia.
• -Original diathesis stress model is oversimplistic. Multiple genes increase vulnerability, each with a small effect on its own - there is no schizogene. Stress comes in many forms, including dysfunctional parenting. Researchers now believe stress can also include biological factors. For example, Houston found childhood sexual trauma was a diathesis and cannabis use a trigger. This means that there are multiple factors, biological and psychological, affecting both diathesis and stress.
• +Real world application. Tarrier randomly allocated 315 participants to (1) medication + CBT group, or (2) medication + supportive counselling group, or (3) control group (medication only). Participants in the two combination groups showed lower symptom levels than those in the control group - but no difference in hospital readmission. This means that there is a clear practical advantage to adopting an interactionist approach in the form of superior treatment outcomes.
• +-Jarvis and Okami suggest this argument is the same as claiming that because alcohol reduces shyness, shyness is caused by a lack of alcohol, the treatment-causation fallacy.

  Therefore we cannot automatically assume that the success of combined therapies means interactionist explanations are correct.
• Urbanisation

  Schizophrenia is more commonly diagnosed in urban than rural areas, may support the interactionist position (urban living is a stressor). However, schizophrenia may simply be more likely to be noticed in cities, or people with a diathesis for schizophrenia may migrate to cities. On balance the greater chances of diagnosis in cities is not strong support for the interactionist position.