Evaluations Of Psychological Explanations For Schizophrenia

Question 1

evaluations for psychological Explanations

Answer 1

• support for family dysfunction
• problems with evidence for schizophrenic mothers and double bind theory
• strong supportive evidence for cognitive explanations
• ignores biological factors

Question 2

support for family dysfunction

Answer 2

• read et Al reviewed 46 studies of child abuse and SCHIZ and concluded that 69% of adult women had a history of abuse in their child hood and 59% for men
• suggests environmental determinism which provides evidence for the effects of family dysfunction on developing SCHIZ
• but it is questioned because it was collected in a retrospective way ( data collected after they are diagnosed meaning they have to try and remember)
• the schizophrenia may have distorted their recall of childhood experiences
• means findings may lack scientific credibility as they could be inaccurate
  limitation
  study may lack internal validity

Question 3

problems with evidence for schizophrenic mothers and double bind theory

Answer 3

• evidence was based on clinical observations of patients and assessing the personality of mothers of patients for crazy making characteristics such as controlling
• has lead to historically parent blaming saying that it’s the mothers fault because of how they communicate and behave towards their child
• has ethical implications for sufferers and it adds to the difficulty of living with schizophrenia by creating discrimination in society ( social sensitivity)
• means schizophrenic mothers get labels by society that they are the blame for their child becoming mentally ill
• can decrease peoples quality of life and even increase the severity of their symptoms
  limitation
  doesn’t help family based therapy

Question 4

strong supportive evidence for cognitive explanations

Answer 4

• Stirling et Al compared 30 patients with a diagnosis of SCHIZ to 18 non patient controls on cognitive tasks such as the stroop test ( naming the ink colours of coloured words- having to suppress the impulse to read the words)
• findings shown that SCHIZ patients took twice as long than control
• problem is that it demonstrates a correlation between symptoms and faulty cognition but doesn’t tell us the possible causes
  -only suggests a strong relationship doesn’t tell us the cause and effect relationship
  LIMITATION
  only helps us to identify the proximal cause for symptoms and not the distal cause for the illness itself

Question 5

ignores biological factors

Answer 5

• may be because both factors ( biological and psychological) that cause the same symptoms
• diathesis stress model demonstrates how the interaction between biological influences such as dopamine and psychological influences such as family dysfunction can develop schizophrenia in people
• problem because people may require biological treatment rather than psychological if their disorder arose because of their dopamine levels mainly
• suggests the need of an interactionist approach to SCHIZ
  LIMITATION
  it can never represent the complex nature of the illness by looking at one perspective and it means treatment is much more difficult as many benefit from combined treatment