1
Q
Psychological Explanations
The Schizophrenogenic Mother
Family Dysfunction
A
- Fromm-Reichman (1948) proposed a psychodynamic explanation for schizophrenia which noted patients often talked about a certain type of mother.
- She called this the schizophrenogenic mother - a cold, rejecting and controlling and controlling mother.
- This creates an environment of tensition and secrecy, leading to distrust which later develops into paranoid delusions and schizophrenia.
2
Q
Psychological Explanations
Double-bind Theory
Family Dysfunction
A
- Bateson (1972) agreed family climate is significant but emphasised the role of communication style within a family.
- The child finds themselves in situations where they fear they are doing the wrong thing but recieve mixed signals about what this is.
- They will be punished for wrongdoing by a withdrawal of love.
- This leaves them with an understanding that the world is confusing and dangerous (leading to disorganised thinking and paranoid delusions)
3
Q
Psychological Explanations
Expressed Emotion
Family Dysfunction
A
- Expressed emotion (EE) is the level of emotion expressed towards a person with schizophrenia from their carers.
- Verbal criticism of the person, occassionally accompanied with violence.
- Hostility towards the person, including anger and rejection.
- Emotional over-involvement in the person’s life, including needless self-sacrifice.
- These EE are a source of stress which explains high relapse rates in schizophrenia.
- It has also been suggested that stress triggers the onset of schizophrenia in someone already vulnerability.
4
Q
Psychological Explanations
Dysfunctional Thinking
Cognitive Explanations
A
- Schizophrenia is associated with several types of dysfunctional thought processing.
- Reduce thought processing in the ventrial striatum is associated with negative symptoms.
- Reduced information processing in the temporal and cingulate gyri is associated with positive symptoms.
- This lower-than-average information processing suggests congition is impaired.
5
Q
Psychological Explanations
Meta-representation Dysfunction
Cognitive Exaplanations
A
- Frith (1992) identified two kinds of dysfunctional thought processing.
- Metarepresentation is the cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour which allows us insight on our own intentions and to interpret the actions of others.
- Dysfunctional metarepresentation disrupts the person’s ability to recognise our own thoughts as being ourselves and not someone else.
- This explains delusions and the idea of thought insertion.
6
Q
Psychological Explanations
Central Control Dysfunction
Cognitive Explanations
A
- Frith also identified issues with the cognitive ability to suppress automatic reponses while performing deliberate actions.
- Speech poverty and thought disorder could result in the inability to suppress automatic thoughts.
- This displays as a derailment of thoughts because each word triggers new associations the person cannot suppress.
7
Q
Family Dysfunction: Evaluation
Research Support
Strength
A
- There is clear evidence linking family dysfunction to schizophrenia.
- Indictors of famiy dysfunction includes insecure attachment and childhood trauma, particularly abuse.
- Adults with schizophrenia are disproportionately likely to have insecure attachment .
- Read (2005) also reported 69% of women and 59% of men with schizophrenia have a history of physical and/or sexual abuse.
This strongly suggests that family dysfunction makes people more vulnerable to schizophrenia.
8
Q
Cognitive Explanations: Evaluation
Research Support
Strength
A
- There is evidence for dysfunctional thought processes.
- Sterling (2006) compared the performance of cognitive tasks in 30 people with and without schizophrenia.
- Tasks included naming text-colours of colour words, having to suppress the tendency to read the words aloud.
- As predicted by Frith, people with schizophrenia took an average of twice as long to finish.
This means that the cognitive process is impaired in those with schizophrenia.
9
Q
Family Dysfunction: Evaluation
Explanations Lack Support
Limitation
A
- The evidence base for family dysfunction is poor.
- There is plenty of evidence supporting the idea that family based stress is associated.
- However, there’s almost none supporting the schizophrenogenic mother and double-bind.
- Both of these theories are based on clinical observation and informal assessment of the mother’s personality but not systematic evidence.
This means that family explanations have been unable to account for the link between childhood trauma and schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia
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