Psychological explanations of schizophrenia Flashcards
(10 cards)
What is double bind theory?
Bateson et al - children who frequent receive contradictory messages from their parents are more likely to develop schizophrenia
These interactions prevent the development of an internally coherent construction of reality and in the long run manifests into schizophrenic symptoms
Psychiatrist R.D. Laing argues this is actually a reasonable response to an insane world
What is expressed emotion?
A family communication style in which members of the family of a psychiatric patient talk about the patient in a critical or hostile manner/in ways that indicate over-involvement with the patient
Kuipers et al - High levels of EE relative talk more and listen less
Linszen - a patient returning to a family with high EE is 4 times more likely to relapse - living in these emotional climates leads to stress beyond the patients already impaired coping mechanisms
How does the cognitive approach explain schizophrenia?
Dysfunctional thought processing
What are the cognitive explanations of delusions?
During the formation of delusions, the patients interpretations of their experiences are controlled by inadequate information processing - key characteristic is egocentric bias (perceiving ones self as the central components in events) - jump to conclusions
Often untrue but patients are not willing to consider they may be wrong
Why does the cognitive approach propose that schizophrenics have ‘impaired insight’?
They have an inability to recognise cognitive distortions and substitute more realistic explanations for events
What are the cognitive explanations for hallucinations?
Focus excessive attention pm auditory stimuli (hypervigilance) and so have higher expectancy for the occurrence of a voice
Aleman suggests hallucination-prone individuals find it hard to distinguish between imaginary and sensory-based perceptions and do not go through the same processes of reality testing
What evidence is their for the importance of healthy family relationships?
Tienari et al -adopted children who had schizophrenic biological parents were more likely to become ill themselves than those with non-schizophrenic parents
HOWEVER, this difference emerged only in situations where the adopted family was rated as disturbed
This suggests illness only manifests under appropriate environmental conditions
Why are individual differences important in vulnerability to EE?
Altorfer et al found 1/4 of the patients they studies showed no physiological responses to stressful comments from their relatives
Lebell et al - how a patients appraise the behaviour of their relatives is important - many can do well regardless of how the family environment is objectively rated
What supporting evidence is their for the cognitive model of schizophrenia?
Sarin and Wallice - positive symptoms have their origins in faulty cognition
e.g. delusional patients were found to show various biases in their information processing (lack of reality testing)
Hallucinations - patients had impaired self-monitoring + experience their own thoughts as voices
Beneficial for therapists to know
What is an issue with the cognitive model of schizophrenia and why may a integrated model of schizophrenia be more appropriate?
Cognitive model only deals with one aspect of disorder (cognitive impairment) but ignores other aspects
Howes and Murray suggest the integrated model instead - vulnerability factors together with exposure to significant social stressors (social adversity), sensitises the dopamine system, causing it to increase the release of dopamine
Biased cognitive processing of this increased dopamine activity results in paranoia and hallucinations
