AO3

• Schizophrenogenic mother - Butzlaff and Hooley (1998) showed using a meta-analysis of 27 studies that relapse into schizophrenia is significantly more likely in families that have issues with expressed emotion.
• Double bind theory - Tienari et al. found SZ in adopted children whose bio mother had SZ was 5.8% in healthy families, in 36.8% in dysfunctional families.
• Double bind theory - Berger in 1965, who found that schizophrenics reported a higher recall of double bind statements by their mothers than non-schizophrenics.
• Double bind theory - Bateson reported a case study, where a recovering SZ was visited in hospital by his mother. he embraced her warmly, but said 'don't you love me anymore?' when she left, he assaulted an aide.
• Evidence for the double bind theory may not be reliable as it remains unclear whether cognitive factors cause schizophrenia or if schizophrenia causes these cognitions so their recall may not be accurate.
• A second weakness of the double bind theory is the ethical issues involved. When blaming the family with little empirical evidence to support it, negative consequences can occur in the form of guilt and poor mental health. Furthermore, gender bias is also an issue as the mother tends to be blamed the most, which means such research is highly socially sensitive. These suggests that the research therefore does not protect individuals from harm.
• Expressed emotion - practical applications. For example Hogarty (1991) produced a type of therapy session, which reduced social conflicts between parents and their children which reduced EE and thus relapse rates.
• Research support for expressed emotion - Kavanagh reviewed 26 studies of expressed emotion, finding the mean relapse rate for schizophrenics who returned to live with high EE families was 48%, compared to 21% for those with low EE families
• Expressed emotion explnation does not explain why all children in dysfunctional families don't develop SZ. Alforfer found 1/4 of patients showed no physiological response to stressful comments from relatives.
• Stirling et al, stroop test on 30 schizophrenics and 18 control patients, name ink coloured words, took 2x as long to controls suggesting ability to suppress automatic responses is faulty (central control) in people with schizophrenia
• Knoblich et al found many schizophrenics lack meta representation, where schizos and non schizos were asked to draw a circle on pad connected to a PC monitor, could be in control or computer was in control, asked to identify when they were in control, found non-schizophrenics could but schizophrenics couldn't suggesting they can't self monitor.
• Therapies for meta representation useful for sufferers, and links symptoms but origin is unclear
• Therapies for meta representation useful for sufferers, and links symptoms but origin is unclear