Psychological Explanations

Ans: Regression to a pre-ego stage and attempts to re-establish control (a lack of awareness of self)

Ans: Higher risk of schizophrenia if really stressed. Brown and Birley- before schizophrenic episodes, those patients had reported twice as many stressful life events than patients without schizophrenic episodes.

Ans: Linzen- a patient returning to family with high levels of expressed emotion is 4 times more likely to relapse. Kalafi+Torabi- high levels of expressed emotion (e.g overprotective mothers and rejective fathers), were the main causes of schizophrenia. This links to the diahesis stress model because it's saying that by the parents acting in this way, it triggers the onset of schizophrenia.

Ans: Children who often recieve contradictory messages from parents are more likely to develop schizophrenia.

Ans: Retrospective: Brown and Birley- (looking back, what could have called caused the onset) Prospective: Hirch et al- monitored 71 Sz patients over 48 week period. Found that stressful events accumilated to cause the episode.

Sz's cannot distinguish between actions drived by external forces and those driven by internal forces.

He said that some psychotic symptoms arise from a disconnection between stored knowledge and sensory input.

No evidence to support it (AO3-its not falsifiable, Karl Popper) Parents of Sz patients do behave differently.

Van Os reported no link between life events and Sz. In a prospective part of the study he found that a stressful life event were less likely to make a patient relapse. Link between life events and Sz is only correlational, not showing its a definite cause, other factors may be involved. ("Chicken and Egg")

Sz's report higher recall of double bind statements from their mothers than non-Sz. However this evidence is not reliable.

Issue of cause or effect ("Chicken+Egg") Therapies based on this theory significantly reduce relapse rates.

A link has been found between excess dopamine and working memory. A drug has been created that creates hallucination to show Sz that they arent real.

Once a patient is labelled Sz this diagnosis continued to influence behaviour of staff towards patients. RD Laing said that Sz was a response to intolerable stresses in the famiy/society. Scheff's studies supported the theory.