interactionist approach

• Interactionist approach

  A way to explain the development of behaviour in terms of a range of factors, including both biological and psychological ones. Most importantly such factors don't simply add together but combine in a way that can't be predicted by each one separately i.e. they interact.
• Diathesis-stress model

  schizophrenia is explained as the result of both an underlying vulnerability (diathesis) and a trigger (stressor), both of which are necessary for the onset of schizophrenia. In early versions of the diathesis-stress model, vulnerability was genetic and triggers were psychological. Nowadays both genes and trauma are seen as diatheses, and stress can be psychological or biological in nature.
• High doses of THC can trigger schizophrenia in those with an underlying vulnerability
• Interactionist approach to schizophrenia

  • Acknowledges that there are biological, psychological and social factors in the development of schizophrenia
  • Biological factors include genetic vulnerability and neurochemical/neurological abnormality
  • Psychological factors include stress from life events and daily hassles
  • Social factors include poor quality interactions in the family
• Diathesis-stress model

  • Both a vulnerability to schizophrenia and a stress-trigger are necessary in order to develop the disorder
  • Underlying factors make a person particularly vulnerable to developing schizophrenia
  • Onset of the condition is triggered by stress
• Stress


  A negative experience
• Modern understanding of diathesis

  • Many genes each appear to increase genetic vulnerability only slightly, there is no single 'schizogene'
  • Diathesis now includes a range of factors beyond the genetic, including psychological trauma
• Modern understanding of stress

  • Stress includes anything that risks triggering schizophrenia, not just psychological stress
  • Much recent research has concerned cannabis use as a stressor, as it increases the risk of schizophrenia by up to seven times according to dose
• Most people do not develop schizophrenia after smoking cannabis, presumably because they lack the requisite vulnerability factors
• Treatment according to the interactionist model

  • Acknowledges both biological and psychological factors in schizophrenia
  • Compatible with both biological and psychological treatments
  • Associated with combining antipsychotic medication and psychological therapies, most commonly CBT
• In the US there is more of a history of conflict between psychological and biological models of schizophrenia, leading to slower adoption of an interactionist approach, with medication without an accompanying psychological treatment being more common
• In the original diathesis-stress model, diathesis (vulnerability) was entirely genetic, the result of a single

  'schizogene'.

  if a person does not have the schizogene then no amount of stress would lead to schizophrenia

  In carriers of the schizogene, chronic stress , including the presence of a schizophrenogenic mother, could result in the development of schizophrenia


  meehls model