AO3 - Biological Explanations of Schizophrenia

• Research to support the role of genetics in the development of schizophrenia comes from Tierney. He studied 155 adopted children who had biological mothers with schizophrenia and found that they had a concordance rate of 10% compared to 1% in adopted children without schizophrenic parents. This provides significant support for the role of genetics as an explanation of schizophrenia as the role of Social Learning Theory could not have been a factor as the children were adopted.
• A strength of the biological explanation of schizophrenia is that it uses scientific methods. This is because the theory is based on objective and empirical techniques such as gene mapping studies and brain scans such as FMRI which are used to identify specific genes (PCM1) or areas of the brain linked to schizophrenia (enlarged ventricles). Therefore, this increases the overall internal validity of the biological explanation of schizophrenia, thus, raising Psychology’s scientific status.
• The biological explanation of schizophrenia can be criticised for biological determinism, this is because the theory states that an individual is controlled by internal factors such as high dopamine activity (hyperdopaminergia) in the subcortex which inevitably causes auditory hallucinations, or genes such as PCM1/brain structures like enlarged ventricles. Therefore, it neglects the role of free will, and choice that individuals have; this could leave victims feeling like they have no control over their schizophrenic behaviour.
• A strength of the dopamine hypothesis is that it has practical applications. This is because the principles of the theory, that sz is caused by an imbalance of dopamine has led to the treatment of drug therapies such as typical and atypical antipsychotics. These drugs are effective in treating schizophrenia by balancing levels of dopamine in the patient’s brain and therefore reducing symptoms of schizophrenia such as hallucinations and delusions. Therefore the biological explanation of schizophrenia is an important part of applied psychology as it helps to treat people in the real world.