Psychological Explanations of Schizophrenia

• Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1948)

  Schizophrenogenic mother: cold, rejecting, controlling

  Leads to distrust that later develops into paranoid delusions e.g. beliefs of being persecuted by another person- leading to schizophrenia
• Double-Blind Theory

  Theory that schizophrenia caused by mixed messages from parents that express care.
• Double-Blind Theory: Gregory Bateson et al (1972)

  Suggested family climate is important in development of schizophrenia but emphasised the role of communication style within a family.

  
  

  Developing child find selves trapped in situations where fear doing wrong thing, received with mixed messages about what this is, unable to comment on unfairness of situation or seek clarification.

  
  

  When "get it wrong" (often) child is punished by withdrawal of love

  Leaves them understanding world as cruel and dangerous and reflected in symptoms like disorganised delusions
• Expressed Emotion (EE)

  Level of Emotion- negative emotions directed to a schizophrenic person by their carers who are often family members:

  • verbal criticism
  • Hostility
  • emotional over involvement in the life of the person

  These high levels of expressed emotion directed towards the individual are serious source of stress for them.

  Primarily an explanation for relapse in people with schizophrenia
• Dysfunctional Thinking:

  Disruption in thinking processes

  • reduced thought processes in the Ventral Striatum associated with negative symptoms.
  • reduced thought processes in the temporal and cingulate gyri
• Metarepresentation Dysfunction:

  Christopher Frith et al. (1992)

  Metarepresentation:

  The cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour.

  This allows us insight into our own intentions and goals.

  This allows us to interpret actions of others.

  
  

  Dysfunction:

  disrupt ability to recognise own actions and thoughts carrie out by ourselves.

  would explain hallucinations of hearing voices and delusions like thought insertion.
• Central Control Dysfunction:

  Christopher Frith et al. (1992)

  Identified issues with cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while performing deliberate actions.

  Speech poverty and thought disorder result In inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts
• Strength- Research Support:

  • explanations linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia e.g. exposure to childhood trauma + insecure attachment:

  Adults with schizophrenia more likely to have attachment type C or D

  
  

  John Read et al. (2005)

  • 69% women + 59% men with schizophrenia were victims of physical/sexual abuse
• Limitations- family explanations poor evidence base explanations

  • no support on theories like double-blind and schizophregenic mother
  • both theories are clinical observations of people with schizophrenia and also informal assessments of mother's personality
• Strength- evidence for dysfunctional thought processing

  John Sterling et al. (2006):

  • Conducted cognitive task with 30 people with schizophrenia and 30 people in a control group
  • Task included Stroop Task (name font-colours of colour-words)
  • Results: people with Schizophrenia took twice as longer
• Limitation- distal and proximal

  • cognitive explanation only explains proximal origins of symptoms
  • (they are explaining what is happening now to produce symptoms)
  • distal explanations focus on what initially caused the condition
  • unclear how childhood trauma etc might link to cognitive processes