Cognitive Explanation of Schizophrenia

• What are the 2 forms of dysfunctional reasoning?


  • Jumping to conclusions bias
  • Persecution bias
• The cognitive explanation says that dysfunctional mental processes causes schizophrenia.
• According to the cognitive explanation, which dysfunctional mental processes cause someone to have schizophrenia?

  • Reasoning
  • Attention
  • Memory
• What is dysfunctional attention?

  When someone gets easily distracted and tends to over-focus their attention on irrelevant details.
• How do dysfunctional thoughts processes cause delusions?


  • Dysfunctional attention causes patients to overfocus on small irrelevant details of real events and coincidences.
  • Patients keep experiencing delusions because the patient tries to explain why coincidences keeps happening, but their dysfunctional reasoning makes their explanation irrational, causing a delusional belief.
• How do dysfunctional thoughts lead to hallucinations?


  • Due to dysfunctional attention, people overfocus on things that they imagine.
  • Over focussing on imagined events causes the imagined events to begin to feel real.
  • People with schizophrenia struggle to tell the difference between things that they imagine and things that have actually happened.
• According to the cognitive explanation, why do patients experience hallucinations?


  Patients overfocus on things that they imagined, and begin to confuse things they imagined with reality.
• Dysfunctional Thought Processes Lead to Negative Symptoms


  • Patients start to become overwhelmed by their abnormal experiences, hallucinations or delusions.
  • Patients want to avoid their abnormal experiences, hallucinations or delusions.
  • Patients isolate themselves from the outside world.
• What are the 2 studies in support for the Cognitive Explanation?


  • O’Carroll reviewed studies that investigated mental dysfunction (on people that had schizophrenia). He found 75% displayed dysfunctional processes
  • O’Carroll reviewed studies that investigated mental dysfunction (those in risk of developing schizophrenia). He found they already showed dysfunctional processing before obtaining schizophrenia, supporting the idea they may be the cause of schizophrenia causes.
• What is a limitation of the cognitive explanation of schizophrenia?


  It does not account for the role of biological factors in schizophrenia. Such as the role of genetics + antipsychotic drug.
• What are the cognitive treatments?

  Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• What is the main aim of CBT?


  To challenge patients’ irrational beliefs and thought processes. (delusion)
• CBT corrects the biases in reasoning that the patient displays, such as the jumping to conclusion bias and persecution bias.This helps to reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusional belief
• CBT challenges and corrects the biases in reasoning that cause the symptoms of schizophrenia.

  CBT aims to treat the dysfunctional thought processes that the patient is having.
• What are the steps involved in CBT are?


  1. Explanation: The patient describes their experiences and beliefs.
  2. Normalisation: The doctor normalises the patient’s experiences.
  3. Challenging: The doctor challenges beliefs and experiences.
  4. Alternative explanations: The patient is asked to develop alternative explanations for beliefs and experiences.
• Study support for CBT 


  NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) conducted a review of studies, in which CBT combined with medical drugs was compared with the use of medical drugs alone. Treatments with CBT were found to not only be more effective at reducing symptoms of schizophrenia but also reduce the likelihood of relapse.
• What is a limitation to the research supporting CBT?


  The consequence of these issues is that the effectiveness of CBT might have been overexaggerated.

  
  

  Study support has been flawed as having...

  • Many studies failed to use random allocation or blinding
  • Studies may have suffered from confounding variables
  • Researchers may have lacked objectivity
• What is an advantage of antipsychotic drugs?


  • They are easier to give to patients than CBT.
  • They are less expensive than CBT.
• What is a limitation of CBT?


  • It requires lots of expensive sessions, which are usually one-to-one with a therapist. This is a problem because it limits the availabilty of treatment.