Schizophrenia - Psychological Flashcards
What are the behavioural explanations of schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a learned response to environmental events
Caused by families or role model of potential sufferers reinforcing socially inappropriate behaviour instead of socially appropriate behaviour
Therefore inappropriate behaviour more likely to reoccurr
What are the four different psychological explanations?
Behavioural
Psychodynamic
Socio-cultural
Cognitive
Evaluation of behavioural explanations
Inconsistent support Reinforcing appropriate behaviour would not offer a cure Parsimony Reductionist Outdated Therapeutic application
What are psychodynamic explanations of schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is caused by dysfunctional defence mechanisms
During first 5 years of life the ID, ego, and superego develop
Cold and punishing environment:
Ego attempts to defend individual by employing regression
Person psychologically reverts back to a past stage in their development
Weak ego so when faced with stress ego shatters and leaves ID in control of personality (primary narcissism)
Individual unable to distinguish between themselves and others and between their needs, desires, and fantasies
Evaluation of psychodynamic explanations
Outdated Focus on role of mother Lack of therapeutic application Not scientific Considers the unconscious
What are socio-cultural explanations of schizophrenia?
Life events
Social causation hypothesis
What is the life events explanation of schizophrenia?
Stressful life events may trigger schizophrenia
Brown and birley:
50% of patients with schizophrenia experiences at least one major life event 3 weeks before onset
12% had experienced life event in preceding 9 weeks
Hirsch et al:
Prospective study
Year period
Life event and difficulties scale
23% risk of relapse during 1 year period due to life events
41% risk for those who had twice the number of average life events
Didn’t find they life events needed to immediately precede schizophrenic episode
Evaluation of life events explanation
They do not always precede schizophrenia Relapse rather than onset Retrospective Cause and effect Direction of effect Context Different types of life events
What is the social causation hypothesis?
Social class and deprivation might be important factors in causing schizophrenia
Lower social class, African-Caribbean 7x more likely than white middle class
Potentially experience more stressful lives
Discrimination can cause stress
Heightened stress results in heightened vulnerability
Evaluation of social-causation hypothesis
Bias in diagnosis Social drift hypothesis Reductionism Difficult to interpret Generalisability Ignores biological factors
What are cognitive explanations of schizophrenia?
Cognitive impairments play an important role in the development and maintenance of schizophrenia
Schizophrenia may be due to a lack of self-monitoring which results in thoughts and ideas being attributed to external sources
Mistakenly regard thoughts as having come from someone else
Hemsley (1993) - there is a substantial breakdown in the relationships between memory and perception
Schizophrenics are unable to predict what will happen next, concentration is poor, attend to unimportant or irrelevant aspects of the environment
Poor integration of memory and perception leads to disorganised thinking and behaviour
Evaluation of cognitive explanations of schizophrenia?
Research support Research against it Accounts for positive symptoms Generalisability Scientific validity Brain damaged patients Cause or effect?
What is CBT?
Cognitive behavioural therapy
Changes maladaptive thoughts into adaptive ones
Works to modify hallucinations and delusional beliefs
May also focus on the patient’s beliefs about the disorder which reduces anxiety
Cognitive and behavioural elements
Who is CBT suitable for?
Patients who are relatively lucid and therefore capable of gaining insight into their problems
What is REBT?
Rational emotive behavioural therapy Albert Ellis ABCDE mnemonic A - activating agent B - belief system C - consequences of beliefs D - disputing beliefs E - effects of change Teaches sufferers that emotional galati lit is a predisposition of schizophrenia Muscle relaxation techniques
