Family dysfunction

• Psychological explanations


  • Focus on the psychological environment
  • The family and its role in making individuals vulnerable to the development of schizophrenia
  • The mind of the sufferer and emphasis the role of abnormal cognition in the experience of schizophrenia
• Family dysfunction

  • Focuses on the abnormal practices within family, which may be a risk factor in the development and maintenance of schizophrenia
  • Involves the schizophrenogenic mother, double bind theory and expressed emotion
• Schizophrenogenic mother

  • Frieda Fromm-Reichmand (1948) proposed a psychodynamic explanation of schizophrenia based on accounts from her patients' childhood
  • She noted that many had a particular type of parent - the schizophrenogenic mother
• Double-blnd theory

  • Gregory Bateson et al (1972)the role of communication style within the family.
  • Where a child developing schizophrenia may regularly find themselves trapped in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing.
  • Through receiving mixed messages, and feeling unable to comment on the unfairness of the situation due to a particular hostile family dynamic.
  • Which leaves the child with a confusing and dangerous outlook on the world, leading to symptoms like disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions
• Expressed emotion (EE)


  • Refers to the level of negative emotions expressed to a schizophrenic individual
• Characteristic of a schizophrenogenic mother

  • Cold  
  • Rejecting  
  • Controlling  
  • Tends of create a family environments fueled by secrecy and tension  

  These characteristics lead to distrust and later create paranoia and delusions - untimely resulting in schizophrenia.  
• Elements of expressed emotion

  1. Verbal criticism sometimes accompanied by violence  
  2. Hostility towards the patents - anger or rejection  
  3. Emotional overinvolvement in the life of the patients - needless self-sacrifice  
• Impact of expressed emotion on the development of schizophrenia

  • These high levels of expressed emotion act as a serious cause if stress for the patient.  
  • This explanation is often used to explain relapse in patients. 
  •  It has also been suggested that a source of stress may trigger on set schizophrenia in a person who is already vulnerable potentially due to their genetic makeup. 
• Weakness to research into family dysfunction - AO3

  • All share the same weakness  
  • Information on childhood experiences was gathered by patients after a diagnosis of schizophrenia. It is possible that the symptoms of schizophrenia may have distorted memories of their childhood 
  • This creates a serious problem of validity
• Weakness for family based information - AO3

  • Although there is evidence to show that poor childhood experiences may lead to schizophrenia, however there is little evidence for a schizophregenic mother and the double bind theory 
  • Both these theories are based on clinical observation of patients and the efforts of early psychologists to identify ‘crazy-making characteristics’ in mothers of schizophrenic patients  
• Issues surrounding parent-blaming. - AO3

  • Parents have already suffered with the trauma of watching their children go through schizophrenia. Due to the diagnosis, they are also like to become lifelong care takers of their children.  
  • It would only cause more traumas for the parent to now be blame them for their child’s condition - adding insult to injury  
  • During the 1980s it became more common for parents to begin looking after their children. Since then, the ideas surrounding the schizophrenogenic mother and the double-bind theories have reduced