non bio exp of schizophrenia: family dysfunction

Question 1

family dysfunction in sz is the result of abnormal communication patterns with family.

Question 1

what is double blind theory?

Answer 1

• children who frequently receive contradictory messages from their parents are more likely to develop sz.
  eg. parents who say they care whilst appearing critical or who express love whilst appearing angry. Bateson did not believe that sz was a disease, but more that it was a result of social pressures from life.
• this causes them to develop an incoherent version of reality, which influences sz symptoms such as social withdrawal and flattening effect.

Question 2

what is expressed emotion?

Answer 2

it relates to a negative emotional climate, that is characterised by a family communication style of criticism, hostility, and emotional over involvement. criticism relates to any negative comments, hostility relates to any aggressive behaviours and emotional involvement is things such as being overprotective parenting.
- high levels of EE are more likely to influence relapse rates of recovering sz who return to their families after treatment.

Question 3

schizophrenic mothers

Answer 3

• a stereotypical mother figure for an individual exhibiting sz is generally described as:
  cold, rejecting, lacking in sensitivity, emotionally disturbed, domineering.
  can also be overprotective and rigidly moral.
• held to play a causal role in development but this view has become outdated.

Question 4

evidence

Answer 4

support for the role of EE:
research has demonstrated that individuals from families with high ee are 3.7 times more likely to relapse than in lower families.
evidence for this comes from brown 1972 who found patients who returned to homes with ee, there was a greater tendency to relapse.

• vaughn and left found similar results. 51% relapsed, compared to only 13% in non ee homes.
  support from the notion of ee has now become a well established maintenance model of sz and many prospective studies have been conducted with support to the expressed emotion hypothesis among many cultures.

Question 5

application

Answer 5

one strength of family explanations is the application to treatment.
family therapy has found be successful, for example pharaoh et al in a meta analysis found family interventions help the patient to understand their illness and to live with it, developing emotional strength and coping skills, thus reducing relapse rates.
the success of family therapy therefore provides the family explanation with credibility.

Question 6

S/W

Answer 6

• a weakness of the family relationship approach is that there is a problem with cause and effect.
• there was found to be significant differences in the way mothers spoke to their daughter which suggest dysfunctional communication may be a result of living with the person with sz rather than the cause.
• this suggests that there is a problem with establishing whether its caused by dysfunctional communication or whether the condition leads to these problems.

Question 7

alternative

Answer 7

bio explanations:
dopamine hypotheis
genetics