psychological explanation:family dysfunction

• family dysfunction

  • abnormal family processes e.g. poor communication, co parenting or high levels of expressed emotion
• schizophrenogenic mother

  • cause of sz
  • Reichmann proposed a psychodynamic explanation for sz based on her patients
  • causes sz by being controlling, rejecting and creating tension in the family
  • leads to distrust, delusions and sz
• double-bind theory

  • sz risk factor
  • Bateson, family climate is important in sz development but emphasises the role of communication in the family
  • child finds themself feeling trapped and fearing unfairness and unable to comment on the unfairness
  • leaves them with confused understanding of the world as dangerous and receives mixed messages
• expressed emotion

  • explanation for relapse
  • level of negative emotion expressed towards a patient by carers (family members)
  • severe elements of verbal criticism with violence, hostility with anger and emotional over involvement in patient's life (with needless self-sacrifice)
  • these emotion levels are a serious stress source for patients
  • a limitation is stress can trigger sz in an already vulnerable patient
• family dysfunction:supporting evidence

  • Read (2005) found sz adults are disproportionately likely to have insecure attachments (type C or D)
  • he also reported 69% of women and 59% of sz men have a history of sexual abuse/physical abuse.
  • Markved found most sz adults had at least one childhood trauma suggesting family dysfunction can cause sz vulnerbality
• family dysfunction:opposing evidence

  • explanations lack support
  • poor evidence for any explanations (almost none to support important family based theories e.g. schizophrenogenic mother and double bind theory
  • both these theories are based on clinical observation of patients and informal assessments of mother's personality but no evidence
  • suggests family explanations don't account for link between trauma and sz
• dysfunctional family:real world application

  • parent blaming
  • research in this area would be useful in showing how insecure attachment and childhood trauma affect sz vulnerability
  • however, blaming the parents who already have to witness the child's sz symptoms can be adding salt to the wound
• cognitive explanation:dysfunctional thinking

  • several types of dysfunctional thinking associated with sz
  • can provide a sx explanation
  • sz is characterised by disruption to normal thought processes, we see this is many symptoms
  • reduced thought processing in ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms
  • Simon (2015) concludes the lower IPS suggest cognition is impaired
• metarepresentation of function

  • frith(1992)found the cognitive ability to reflect on our thoughts and behaviours which allows us insight into own goals and allows us to interpret others' actions
  • this disrupts our ability to recognise our own actions as being carried by ourselves, not someone else
  • this explains hallucincations
• central control function

  • frith(1992) also found issues with cognitive ability to supress emotions whilst carrying out deliberate actions
  • speech poverty could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts
• cognitive explanation: supporting evidence

  • research support - evidence for dysfunction thinking
  • Stirling (2006) used performance comparison on a range of cognitive tasks with a control group and a sz group. he used the stroop task (naming font colour) and found sz people took twice as long to name them
  • this means cognitive processes are impaired in sz people
• cognitive explanation: limitation

  • partial explanation
  • cognitive explanations only explain what's happening now to produce symptoms, not on what initially causes sz symptoms
  • this means cognitive theories on their own only provide partial explanations for sz