psychological explanations

• the schizophrenogenic mother -

  • Fromm-Reichmann (1948) - psychodymanic explanation based on accounts from patients about childhood
  • 'schizophrenia-causing' - mother is cold, rejecting and controlling - creates a family climate characterised by tension and secrecy
  • leads to distrust that later develops into paranoid delusions (beliefs of being prosecuted by another person) and ultimately schizophrenia
• double blind theory -

  • Bateson et al (1972) - emphasised role of communication style within a family
  • developing child regularly finds themselves trapped in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing, but receive mixed messages about what this is and feel unable to comment on the unfairness of this situation or seek clarification
  • when they 'get it wrong' (often) child is punished by withdrawal of love
  • leaves understanding of world as confusing and dangerous - reflected in disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions
  • risk factor not only factor in development
• expressed emotion -

  • level of emotion, particularly negative expressed towards a person with schizophrenia by carers and family
  • verbal criticism
  • hostility - anger and rejection
  • emotional over involvement in life - needless self-sacrifice
  • source of stress - primarily explanation for relapse - also could be a trigger for the onset in a person already vulnerable (eg due to genetic makeup - diathesis stress model)
• dysfunctional thinking -

  • schizophrenia associated with several types of dysfunctional thought processing
  • reduced thought processing in the ventral striatum is associated with negative symptoms
  • reduced processing of information in the temporal and cingulate gyro is associated with hallucinations
  • this lower-than usual level of info processing suggest that cognition is likely to be impaired
• metarepresentation dysfunction -

  • firth et al (1992)
  • metarepresentation - cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour - allows us insight on intentions and goals - also allows us to interpret the actions of others
  • dysfunction would disrupt our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves rather than by someone else
  • explains hallucinations of hearing voices and delusions like thought insertion
• central control dysfunction -

  • firth et al
  • issues with the cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions
  • speech poverty and thought disorder could result from the inability to suppress automatic thoughts and speech triggered by other thoughts
  • eg they tend to experience derailment of thought sbeacsue each word triggers associations and the person cannot suppress automatic responses to these