Evaluation of the Psychological Explanation for Sz

• strengths

  • support for family dysfunction as a risk factor
  • supporting information for dysfunctional informational processing
  • support from success of cognitive therapies
• limitations

  • lacks support
  • socially sensitive
  • weak evidence for double-bind theory
• support for family dysfunction as a risk factor

  Read et al. (2005)- reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and schizophrenia. found that 69% of adult women and 59% of male in-patients with schizophrenia had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse or both
• support for family dysfunction as a risk factor COUNTER

  information about childhood experiences was gathered after the development of symptoms and the schizophrenia may have distorted patients’ recall of childhood experiences. brings into question the validity of the results
• supporting evidence for dysfunctional information processing

  Stirling et al. (2006)- compared patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia with non-patient controls on a range of cognitive tasks, including the Stroop Test. participants have to name the ink colours of coloured words. they found that patients took over twice as long to name the ink colours as the control group

  this supports the idea that people with schizophrenia have a dysfunction in their central control
• support from success of cognitive therapies

  the claim that the symptoms of schizophrenia have their origin in faulty cognition is reinforced by the success of cognitive-based therapies for schizophrenia

  the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBTp has been demonstrated in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) review for treatments for schizophrenia. this review found consistent evidence that, when compared with treatment by antipsychotic medication, CBT was more effective in reducing symptom severity and improving levels of social functioning
• lacks support

  although there is plenty of evidence supporting the idea that childhood family-based stress is associated with schizophrenia, there is almost none for the traditional family-based theories such as the schizophrenogenic mother and double blind

  these theories are based on observations and informal assessments of patients’ mothers’ personalities, but not systematic evidence
• socially sensitive

  the idea that family dysfunction can be causing the development of schizophrenia can lead to parent-blaming. mothers seem to be particularly blamed (schizophrenogenic mother). this places an unfair burden on the mother especially after having to watch their child experience schizophrenic symptoms and take responsibility for their care- to be blamed on top of this could cause significant distress
• weak evidence for the double-bind theory

  there is very limited evidence to support the importance of the double-bind theory in the development of schizophrenia

  patterns of paternal communication in families with a schizophrenic child were measured and found no difference when compared to normal families
• weak evidence for double-bind theory COUNTER

  despite this limited research, there has been some value in the double-bind theory. it has led to the development of family therapy, which has proved very effective in the treatment of schizophrenia