Psychological explanation Flashcards
family dysfunction and cognitive explanations (14 cards)
family dsyfunction
- SZ caused by abnormal communication patterns in families
- risk factors for the development and maintenance of SZ
- expressed emotion and double-bind theory
Double-bind theory
- proposed by Bateson
- child frequently receives contradictory messages from parents
- verbal and non-verbal communication doesn’t match - prevents the development of coherent construction of reality
- child confused and feels unable to do the right thing - leads to disorganised thinking and paranoia
example of double-bind theory
mother tells son she loves him and turn away in disgust at the same time
expressed emotion
- family talk about patient in a hostile or critical manner - likely to increase chance of relapse
- suggest SZ patients have a low tolerance for emotional comments/interactions
- causes stress beyond coping mechanism triggering an episode
cognitive explanations of schizophrenia
- focuses on the role of mental processes
- disruption to normal thought processes
Metarepresentation
- the ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviours
- allows insight into our own intentions and goals
- allows us to interpret the actions of others
Dysfunction in metarepresentation
- disrupts our ability to recognise our own actions and thoughts as being carried out by ourselves
- explains hallucinations and delusions like thought insertion
Central control
- the ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions
- causes disorganised speech and thought disorder
The formation of delusions
- stem from an egocentric bias
- attribute external events as being related to them
- leads to inaccurate conclusions about events
Hallucinating individuals
- excessive attention on auditory stimuli so have a higher expectancy for the occurrence of a width
- struggle to distinguish between imaginary and sensory based information
Attention deficit
- unable to filter pre-conscious thoughts
- gives too much significance to info usually filtered
- overloads mind accounts for positive symptoms
counter-PEEL of psych explanations
RESEARCH SUPPORT for family dysfunction
- read et al.: SZ adults more likely to have insecure attachment indicative to childhood trauma
- relationship between childhood treatment and development
VALIDITY OF FINDINGS
- self reports relies on accurate recollection - may have a skewed perception of reality
Limitations of psych explanations
LACK OF CONSISTENT FINDINGS
- Bergen: SZ adults have higher recall of double-bind than control, Liem: no diff in com for families w/ or w/o SZ child
- no clear explanation
strengths of psych explanations
SUCCESSFUL TREATMENT
- 2014 review for CBT: more effective in reducing symptom severity and increasing social functioning than antipsychotics
- cognitive cause more accurate than biological
