Interactionist treatments

• Interactionist treatments work on the basis that the cause of schizophrenia is both biological and psychological and therefore it’s compatible to use both antipsychotics and CBTp.

  Antipsychotics block dopamine receptor sites blocking dopaminergic activity on the post synaptic neuron which prevents the neuron firing or at least makes it less likely.

  CBTp teaches people to identify malaptive and delusional thoughts and to modify these through disputing, normalisation and reality testing.
• AO3

  :)

  Support for this comes from Turkington et al who debated that it’s not possible to use a combination of treatments without an interactionist approach.

  Tarrier et al found that out of 315 patients those receiving both antipsychotics and CBTp and antipsychotics and counselling had showed lower symptom levels as opposed to those only receiving medication.

  This shows clear practical advangages of treating schizophrenia with and interactionist approach and using treatments in conjunction with each other and this increases the validity.
• AO3

  :(

  Turkington et al argues a good logical fit between an interactionist approach and combination treatments.

  They argue that just because combined treatments are more effective doesn’t mean the interactionist approach to schizophrenia is correct as just because drugs work doesn’t mean schizophrenia is biological in origin.

  Therefore there is an error of logic which leads to a treatment causation fallacy.