Psychological Explanations

Question 1

family dysfunction:

what is a schizophrenogenic mother?

Answer 1

• fromm - reichmann

- this leads to distrust and paranoid delusions

Question 2

family dysfunction:

what is the double bind theory?

Answer 2

• Bateson

- where confused communications can lead to paranoia and delusions

Question 3

family dysfunction:

what is expressed emotion?

Answer 3

• families with high levels of negative EE create stressful environment to cause schizophrenia

Question 4

Cognitive explanations:

what is cognitive dysfunction?

Answer 4

• Firth
• poor metarepresentation leading to hallucinations
• poor central control leading to negative symptoms

Question 5

+ support for family dysfunction as a risk factor

Answer 5

• read = lots of patents report childhood sexual abuse
  as well as insecure attachment (berry)
• supports link between upbringing and schizophrenia
• however most evidence is retrospective so lacks validity

Question 6

• weak evidence for family-based explanations

Answer 6

• no direct evidence for double bind theory or schizo mother

- family based explanations can encourage blaming of parents who children develop schizophrenia

Question 7

+ strong evidence for dysfunctional thought processing

Answer 7

• stirling = patients with schizophrenia take longer to dos troop task, showing impairment to cognition
• however, limitation of cog explanations is that they don’t show origins of the symptoms