28th March – 15 April
Explanations – Psychological
26
15 April
27
22 April Biological Treatments
Psychological treatments
28
29 April
29
6 May
Revision
30
13 May
Revision
31
20 May
Unit 4 Mock exam
28th – 31st May
32
33
34
EASTER
4 June
10 June
17 June
HALF TERM
A2 STUDY LEAVE
Monday 10th June
Monday
(pm)
17th June (am)
PSYA-3
PSYA-4
Unit 3
External Exam
Unit 4 External exam
1. Behavioural 2. Psychodynamic
3. Cognitive
4. Socio-cultural
Psychological Explanations
For Schizophrenia
Activity - Construct A3 mindmap to record this section..
Four key areas
1.Behavioural
2.Psychodynamic
3.Cognitive
4.Socio-cultural
1. Behavioural Theory



Behaviourists argue that schizophrenia is learnt
through operant conditioning.
Someone may do something that gets a positive
reaction or reward from others.
This encourages the person to repeat the behaviourit reinforces it.
Behavioural Factors:


Behavioural explanations claim that a person
behaves in a way that is expected of them and that
psychotic behaviour can be a learnt response to
given demands.
Scheff (1999) found that some children who were
punished in early life retreat into a more satisfying
inner world and were then labelled as ‘odd’.
Scheff’s labeling theory (1966)...
The label then resulted in them behaving in a more
peculiar way in an attempt to be rewarded by more
attention and so a cycle developed.
This became known as ‘labelling theory’ and
schizophrenic behaviour in later life was seen an
attempt to continue to be rewarded with attention and
sympathy…
So.. to summarise..
An individuals bizarre behaviour is rewarded with
attention, it becomes more and more exaggerated
and so schizophrenia develops.
Labelling theory (Scheff, 1999)
Child is Punished
Child displays
attention-seeking
’odd’ behaviour
Child retreats
into inner world
-Displays odd
behaviour
Child rewarded by
attention/sympathy
Child
labelled
as odd
Evaluation -
Support
Support for this theory comes from Liberman
(1982) who suggests that if a child receives little
or no social reinforcement early on in life (e.g.
because of parental neglect), the child will, attend
to inappropriate environmental cues (e.g. the sound
of a word rather than its meaning).
Although this has some face validity it is
probably more relevant to the maintenance
rather than the cause of the disorder.
More labelling support..
Remember ??
“I hear
voices”
“You are a
schizophrenic”
Evaluation -

Support
Rosenhan (1973) supports labelling theory when he
found that psychiatric (diagnostic) labels tend to
become ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’ whereby everything
the patient says / does is interpreted in accordance
with the label applied.
Evaluation 

However
Gove (1982) argued that labels do not lead to
long-term negative self-perceptions and instead
increase the likelihood that those labelled as
mentally ill or their families will seek and benefit
from services and treatment.
However this could also be seen as attention
seeking behaviour.
Evaluation:


These arguments may have face validity as it is
almost impossible to deny, given both commonsense
and research findings that labelling someone as
“crazy” will not have some effect on them.
However .. schizophrenia may be the diagnosis of
the labelled behaviour but not what the initial cause
of the ‘odd’ behaviour was (Gove, 1999).
Evaluation 

However..
Gross (2010) suggests that this explanation may be
reductionist in proposing that a simple label
explains such a complex mental illness as
schizophrenia and therefore trivialises the illness.
In addition the behaviour of adult schizophrenics is
not generally rewarded by others in fact it is often
stigmatised and can result in a lack of privileges
and attention not more.
5 minute Activity - Questions…
1. Labelling Theory involves…. ?
2. Rosenhan’s research supports this theory
because ….. ?
2. Psychodynamic Theory

Freud claimed that schizophrenia is caused by overwhelming anxiety. It is a defence mechanism
involving regression into early stage of
development which he termed “primary narcissism”.
Psychic conflict:
The structure of personality or “psyche”
Id – Pleasure principle
Selfish part of our personality, demands instant
satisfaction of drives related to sex and aggression.
Present from birth.
Ego – Reality principle
Conscious, rational part of our personality
attempts to mediate between demands of id and
superego
Superego – Morality principle
Moral part of our personality which is concerned
with right and wrong (conscience)
Id and Superego are in direct
conflict with one another.
‘Psychic conflict’
The well-adjusted person
develops a strong Ego that is
able to control the other two
components.
Psychic conflict can occur at
any time but particularly in
early childhood, as the ego is
not fully developed.
Moral conscience
SUPEREGO
EGO
Controlling
the other two
“Naughty”
pleasure seeking ID
Psychodynamic Theory

This results in the ego not being separated from the
id which leads to a loss of contact with reality and
an inability to deal with external reality. Therefore
hallucinations are the ego’s attempt to restore
contact with reality.
Critical Evaluation
A03- However, there are major issues with this
explanation; it is theoretical and is not supported by
any experimental evidence. It therefore, lacks scientific
rigour.
A03 - Reductionist - ignores biological influences
(Folens, 2009)
Critical Evaluation

The treatment used in this theory- ‘Psychoanalysis’
(dream analysis, hypnosis, etc.) is not an effective
treatment, which therefore suggests that
psychodynamic theory does not explain what causes
schizophrenia (Lindenberg, 2000).
3. Cognitive Theory

Cognitive psychologists argue that schizophrenia is
caused by faculty information processing.
This leads to …
delusions, thought interference, language
impairment and memory problems.
Evaluation

- Support
Neufeld (1978) compared the cognitive processes
of people with schizophrenia with a control group.
The participants with schizophrenia took longer to
encode stimuli and showed short-term memory
problems. This would suggest that their ability to
process information was impaired.
However..
Evidence against...

Biochemical research suggests that cognitive
problems are caused by increased dopamine
function rather than faulty information processing.
(Davison & Neale 2000)
4. Socio-Cultural Factors
Socio-Economic Hypotheses
Family Relationships
Socio-economic hypotheses

There are two main socio-economic hypotheses, both
relating to the status of the individual;
1.Social causation hypothesis
 This states that people with low social status are
more likely to suffer from schizophrenia than
people with higher social status.
 It is thought that factors like poverty and
discrimination cause high stress levels and that this
can cause schizophrenia.
2. Social drift hypothesis
 This states that mental illness causes a
decline or downward drift in social
status.
Evaluation


- Support
Several research studies have found a relationship
between economic deprivation and inequality and
the risk of schizophrenia. Boydell et al (2003) found
that a positive correlation between incidence rates
of schizophrenia and degree of inequality in
deprived areas in London, even after adjusting for
such variables as age, sex, absolute deprivation
and ethnicity.
These findings support the social causation
hypothesis.
Evaluation
- Support
In further support of these 2 theories a British study
by Cochrane and Stopes-Roe (1980) found that
lower social status was associated with higher risk of
developing schizophrenia.
However…
 Davison et al (2004) found that schizophrenia led
to a decline in social status thus supporting the
social drift hypothesis.

Evaluation

- Support
In support of both socioeconomic hypotheses, Turner
and Wagonfeld (1967) found that schizophrenics
tended to be of lower social status overall than their
fathers but that their fathers tended to be in the
lower social classes in the first instance.
Evaluation

However, more disturbingly Johnstone (1989) found
that patients from lower classes are more often
diagnosed with severe conditions, such as
schizophrenia, even when presenting similar
symptoms to that of higher classes, further
highlighting the problems with class differences and
social bias in diagnosis.
Evaluation

-Support
Harrison et al (2001) found that people who were
born in deprived areas were more likely to develop
schizophrenia. This suggests that factors like
poverty, unemployment and crowding have an
impact on schizophrenia.
Critical Evaluation
Additional evidence against....
A03 - These results are correlational so they do not
show cause and effect. The social drift hypothesis
suggest that there are more people with
schizophrenia in deprived areas because having
schizophrenia gives them a lower social status e.g.
because they might be unemployed.
Evaluation

- Support
These findings have been replicated in many other
studies of migrant groups, including Castle et al
(1991) and Selten et al (2001) even accounting for
other variables. This factor has strong scientific
validity as a causal explanation for schizophrenia.
Critical Evaluation
IDA
Turner and Wagonfeld (1967) suggest that this
approach may be deterministic in that it is too
simplistic to claim that socioeconomic factors alone
cause schizophrenia. They propose that a more
combinational model is more appropriate as
schizophrenia is more likely to be a complex
interaction between genetic vulnerability and
environmental stressors.
Other Socio-Cultural factors
Family Relationships

One of the most important family interaction factors
is the mother and child relationship
(Bateson, 1956).
Evaluation
- Support
A British longitudinal study that started in 1946
consisted of 5,362 participants, all born in that same
week. By age 43 there were 30 cases of schizophrenia.
The study found that one of the most powerful risk
factors for the development of schizophrenia was the
quality of the mother-child relationship at aged 4, as
rated by health visitors.
A poor relationship carried a six fold increase in risk for
later Schizophrenia. (Folens, 2009).
Evaluation 
Support
In a similar study carried out in New Zealand
which followed 1000 children from birth to
age 26 demonstrated that the mothers of
children who developed schizophrenic
symptoms were rated as having poorer
attitudes and behaviours towards their children
at age 3.
Critical evaluation..
A03 – Reductionist point
“However these studies may be reductionist in that
they fail to show whether the poor mother-child
relationship is the result of bad parenting or the
parent reacting to behaviour associated with
schizophrenia displayed by the child ( Gross, 2010).
Evaluation -
Support
However..

Compelling evidence in support of the model by
Myrhrman et al (1966) using the Northern Finland
1966 Birth Cohort (11,017 individuals) followed
through to age 28, found that the risk of developing
schizophrenia was considerably raised for the
unwanted children even after adjusting for all social
and demographic variables.
Evaluation
Transition word
Furthermore Agid et al (1999) observed a
significant correlation between parental loss
before the age of 8, particularly the loss of the
mother through death, and the subsequent
development of schizophrenia.
A03
This correlation was further supported by…
…. Mallett et al (2002) who suggests that the
findings had high external validity as they were
constant across different cultures, had large
sample sizes and were well controlled
longitudinal studies.
Other family relationships
Double - bind theory.




Bateson et al (1956) argued that dysfunctional communication
within family relationships can lead to schizophrenia.
The double-bind theory suggests that interactions with parents,
i.e. contradictory messages sent by parents to children can
cause confusion and therefore an inability to form a coherent
construction of reality.
E.g. being told you are loved but then being ignored by the
same parent- child then finds it hard to respond to the parent
and
Schizophrenic symptoms can then result.
Other family relationships

The double-bind theory found that ,for example, they
may express love in an angry voice. Therefore, the
child becomes confused but as these demands
cannot be avoided or satisfied an individual’s
schizophrenic symptoms become a learnt response
to these impossible demands.
Critical Evaluation
However.. the double-bind theory is only claiming
a correlational relationship between family
communication and the development of schizophrenia
and there is very little scientific evidence to support
the findings and conclusions of Bateson’s research
(Gross, 2009).
A03-Reductionist
In addition, the behaviour displayed by the
parent may indicate that they were also
suffering from schizophrenia. Therefore it might
be argued that this correlation is reductionist in
that the communication link could be genetic
rather than psychological.
Essay question
Discuss one or more psychological explanations
of schizophrenia, including the evidence on
which they are based
(10+14marks)
Summary QUIZ
Psychological explanations