Psychological explanations - family and cognitive

• Double bind theory

  • Bateson - stated that if children receive mixed messged from parents, they learnt that they cannot trust the messages they receive from others.
  • as a result they do not trust their own feelings and perceptions
  • this contradictory information ‘punishes’ the child for doing what was asked and then punished again when the parent gives no reason for pushing away.
  • The theory suggests that children will become confused and lose their grip on reality. Negative symptoms of social withdrawal and flat affect may be an appropriate and logical response to double bind situations.
• high expressed emotions (EE) is a family communication style that involves

  • critical comments through both tone and content
  • occasionally accompanied by violence
  • hostility - including anger and rejection
  • emotional over-involvement in their life - including needless sacrifice

  if these factors are high the risk of relapse is high. BUT it has been suggested that it may be a source of stress which could trigger someone who is vulnerable to SZ due to their genetic make-up (diathesis stress)
• • supporting evidence for the role of EE but relapse rates of patients
  • Brown (1966) studied people recovering from SZ.
  • Families where EE levels were high resulted in 58% of people with SZ returning to hospital for further treatment, compared to only 10% of those from low expressed emotion families.
  • however, it is possible the patients difficult behaviour influences the families behaviour patterns rather than the other way round.
  • therefore it is unclear whether EE is a casual agent in the relapse rates or just a reaction to the patients behaviour
• • evidence supporting poor childhood experiences and. their associations with SZ
  • Berger (1965) found that SZ had higher recall of double-bind statements by their mothers than non-SZs
  • however this may not be reliable as patients recall may be affected by their SZ
  • therefore, it is unclear whether EE is a casual agent in relapse rates or just a reaction to the patients behaviour.
• • biological factors are not adequately considered
  • doesn’t account for biological factors such as findings in the patients brain e.g. the cortex
  • limitation of the explanation as it makes it unclear as to whether the cause is psychological or biological.
  • therefore, psychological explanations may be a reason for relapse not the cause of SZ