Schizophrenia Psychology AQA

• Inter-rater reliability

  Two or more health professionals come to the same diagnosis
• Co-morbidity

  Two or more conditions occur simultaneously
• Symptom overlap

  The same symptoms occur within different conditions
• Cheniaux et al (2009)

  Two psychiatrists independently diagnosed 100 patients using two different assessments
• Buckley et al (2009)

  Investigated those with schizophrenia and found they were likely to also suffer from another condition
• Gottesman (1991)

  Schizophrenia runs in families. Probability of schizophrenia = 48% between MZ twins, 46% if both parents had it and 10% between DZ twins.
• Tienari et al (2004)

  Children adopted from 19,000 Finnish mothers at birth. More likely to develop schizophrenia when biological relatives had it, but not when adoptive parents did. High EE levels also implicated in development, but only for those with a genetic risk.
• Ripke et al (2014)

  Meta-analysis of genome studies. Genetic make-up of 37,000 patients compared to 113,000 controls - 108 candidate genes associated with increased risk of schizophrenia
• Hyperdopaminergia

  High levels of dopamine in the brain's subcortex
• Hypodopaminergia

  Low levels of dopamine in the brain's cortex
• Curran et al (2004)

  Drugs that increase levels of dopamine made schizophrenia worse and induce schizophrenia like symptoms in non-schizophrenics
• Goldman-Rakik et al (2004)

  Low levels of dopamine in prefrontal cortex thought to have a role in causing negative symptoms of schizophrenia
• Moghaddam and Javitt (2012)

  High levels of glutamate contibute to symptoms of schizophrenia. The dopamine hypothesis is reductionist as it doesn't consider other neurotransmitters
• Neural Correlates

  Patterns of structure or activity in the brain that occur in conjunction with an experience
• Allen et al (2007)

  Participants listened to recordings of speech and had to identify if it was their own or not. MRI's used to scan brain.
• Allen et al (2007)

  Hallucinating schizophrenics made more errors in voice recognition and showed lower levels of activity in the superior temporal gyrus and the anterior cingulate gyrus compared to controls
• Juckel et al (2006)

  Conducted a study involving reward anticipation on 10 schizophrenic males and a matched control group.
• Juckel et al (2006)

  Found healthy males had higher levels of activity in the ventral striatum (involved in reward anticipation) than those who were schizophrenic. The lower the activity the worse the symptoms of schizophrenia.
• Liu and de Haan (2009)

  Typical prescribed dose of Chlorpromazine had declined in the past 50 years.
• Typical anti-psychotics

  Used since the 1950's. Includes Chlorpromazine
• Chlorpromazine


  Can be taken as a syrup, tablet or injection. Side effects include: dizziness, agitation, sleepiness, still jaw, weight gain, itchy skin and tardive dyskinesia.
• Atypical anti-psychotics

  Used since the 1970's. Includes Clozapine.
• Clozapine

  Can be taken as a syrup or a tablet. Side effects include: Agranulocytosis
• Thornley et al (2003)

  Meta-analysis of Chlorpromazine studies. 13 trials with 1121 participants. Schizophrenic control group given a placebo.
• Thornley et al (2003)

  Found better overall functioning and reduced symptom severity in those who took Chlorpromazine.
• Risperidone

  Can be taken as a tablet, syrup or injection. Works on both dopamine and serotonin receptors. Developed to combat serious side effects of Clozapine.
• Meltzer (2012)

  Found Clozapine to be more effective than typical anti-psychotics. Effective in 30-50% of cases where typical anti-psychotics failed.
• Fromm-Reichman (1948)

  Cold, rejecting and controlling mothers may contribute to schizophrenia through distrust that leads to paranoid delusions (Psychologist not theory) Developed by accounts patients gave about childhoods
• Mischler (1968)


  Observations that found that mothers talked to their schizophrenic daughter in an aloof and unresponsive way. Same mothers talked normally to their healthy daughters
• Bateson et al (1972)

  Parents communicate ambiguously with children. Conflicting messages cause confusion and misinterpretation of instructions which parents punish the child for doing wrong. Withdrawal of love may lead to disorganised thinking, speech and paranoid delusions.
• Kennedy (1966)

  Medics analysed letters written from parents to children in hospital. Content was found to be similar for those with schizophrenia and those without, including extent to which they were cold and lacking compassion
• Expressed Emotion

  High levels of this towards a child causes significant stress (e.g. verbal criticism, hostility) More applicable to relapse not cause. (Theory)
• Brown et al (1966)

  Examined progress of discharged schizophrenics who returned to their families. Families were characterised as High EE or low EE.
• Brown et al (1966)

  58% of those who returned to High EE families relapsed compared to 10% who returned to Low EE Families.
• Berry et al (2008)

  Adults with insecure attachments to their primary caregiver were more likely to develop schizophrenia
• Read et al (2005)

  46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia. Found 69% of adult women + 59% men in-patients with schizophrenia has a history of physical abuse.
• Frith et al

  Identified two kinds of dysfunctional thought (cognitive explanation)
• Central control

  Ability to suppress responses and perform deliberate actions. (Disorganised speech could be due to this)
• Stirling et al (2006)

  30 schizophrenics and 18 non-schizophrenics completed the stroop test - measures central control
• Stirling et al (2006)

  Mean time for 'non-compatible' word list: 123.2 seconds fro schizophrenics. 58.12 for non-schizophrenics.