Q1

• Q1) evaluate one social psychological explanation of schizophrenia (10)

  
• Schizophrenia


  A major psychotic disorder that causes a variety of possible symptoms, it affects thought processes but is typified by a lack of contact with reality
• Social psychological explanation of schizophrenia

  • Dysfunctional family communication, including double bind theory and expressed emotion
• Supporting evidence


  • Berge found that schizophrenics reported higher recall of double bind statements by their mothers than non-schizophrenics
  • Mischler & Weider found mothers of schizophrenic daughters were aloof and unresponsive towards them as opposed to their normal daughters
• Refuting evidence


  • Joan Liem found that the communications offered in a structured task by the parents of 11 sons with schizophrenia were no more disordered than the communications offered by parents of 11 sons who did not have schizophrenia
  • McCreadie & Phillips failed to find higher subsequent month and 12-month relapse rates among individuals with schizophrenia living in high EE homes
• A key part of the double bind explanation is to offer an account for the origins of the dysfunctional communications, but there is little evidence to support this idea
• Double bind communications may be a symptom of pathology in the parent and therefore, it could be the pathology rather than the superficial communications which is the greater problem
• This social psychological explanation reduces the complex nature of schizophrenia to simplistic communicational problems and ignores the role of social and biological factors
• This social psychological explanation is deterministic as it suggests that individuals have no free will in their communication skills, and these are purely reflective of communication with family members
• Schizophrenia may be due to communication difficulties within the shared family environment

  It could equally be the product of the family's shared genes
• The Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium found that 108 genetic loci associated with schizophrenia
• Family relationships may act as a psychosocial trigger


  That causes genetically vulnerable individuals to develop schizophrenia