· Genetics
· Diathesis-stress (model)
· Drug use – cannabis
· Family background/history
· Cognitive deficit
· Social background
· Brain chemistry – dopamine (hypothesis)
· Labelling – Social constructionism
· Brain structure
Biological Explanations
47% concordance rate of schizophrenia in monozygotic twins
Around 3-6 months of foetal development, synaptic structures develop – critical period
Cognitive Explanations
Overreacting in situations
Delusions
Incoherent speech
Disturbance in speech
Cognitive Deficit
Definition – A lack of cognitive skills, impairments in thought processes such as perception, memory, and attention. As well as auditory and visual information processing.
Some of the above examples have been put forward as explanations to schizophrenia.
This theory helps to explain paranoid delusions, as schizophrenics misinterpret what is actually harmful or a hazard, for something that is harmless and vice versa.
Conclusions that can be gathered from this are:
Deficits when processing information, often result in the prevailing symptoms
If the patient already has a deficit, of some sort, they will find it much harder to cope in stressful situations.
Emotional pressure often leads to further cognitive deficits.
Evaluation points are:
The approach does not explain the underlying causes of deficits. This means researchers often end up turning to alternative models (e.g. biological)
Psychodynamic Explanations
Difficulties in distinguishing between self and external world – Regression
Behavioural Explanations
Labelling – will live up to their label
+ve / -ve reinforcement
Abnormal behaviour – depends on your own perceptions?
Symptoms of Schizophrenia
DSM-IV / ICD-10 are used to diagnose schizophrenia, which contains many of the following symptoms:
· Inappropriate use of words –
· Poverty of thought – not much thought processing going on, or is it just the inability to express them?
· Hallucinations – illusions of seeing or hearing things
· Apathy – often show a lack of interest or concern on a matter.
· Delusions – have a false belief or impression about something.
· Inadequate ego boundaries – Conflict between the Super Ego and the Id, Super Ego wins
· Catatonic behaviour – being able to maintain a body posture for long periods of time.
· Emotional blunting – show apathy and have no or little facial expressions.
· Incoherent speech – not very structured speech, often jumping from topic to topic in a conversation.
· Motor function – unpredictable behaviour
· Emotional liability – When in a strong relationship with someone and something goes wrong they blame themselves for it all.
· Depersonalisation – Believe mind and body are separate
· Word salad – using random words in places
Explanations of Schizophrenia
Class discussion
Genes
· 1 gene can cause schizophrenia
· 60% of factors are due to genetic factors
· Monozygotic twins have highest chance of developing schizophrenia
· Children of schizophrenic parents are 40-50% likely to develop schizophrenia
· Studies from other countries show different concordant results. ( ethnocentrism)
· Schizophrenia has a high inheritance rate
· Chromosome 5, 11, 22, 24 tend to be linked to schizophrenia. (Ethical issues). Results of experiments are inconclusive because so many genes are involved.
· Hesten – Adopted children have same risk of developing schizophrenia as biological children.
· If schizophrenia is purely genetic then why isn’t there a 100% concordance rate rather than 48%
Brain Structure
· With monozygotic twins, often the 1st twin gets more of the nutrients form the placenta than the 2nd twin. This results in 2nd twin having an underdeveloped cortex
· Which came 1st the abnormality of schizophrenia?
· No direct evidence may cause demand characteristic under experimental situations.
· Can help people to come to terms with it and understand it.
Dopamine
· Could be due to over sensitive receptors?
· Biological explanations are limited by technological advancements.
· Brain evolves over time
Family Systems Theory
· Yields rich qualitative data
· Although often poses ethnocentrism
· On fine lines with ethical issues.
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