1. Psychological explanations
Schizophrenia
Psychological explanations

2. You need to be able to:
Describe and evaluate psychological explanations
You could get a Q to describe & evaluate ‘psychological explanations’ in general or ‘one psychological explanation’
So we need to make sure you can describe & evaluate each one detail just in case
We will focus on the two explanations which link to the treatments
Family dysfunction
Cognitive

3. Schizophrenia – psychological explanations
Description (A01 – up to 6m)
Evaluation (A03 – up to 16m, likely to be 10m)
Application (A02)
Family explanation
Cognitive Explanation

4. Key terms/ concepts to include
Family Relationships
Double bind
Contradictory, conflicting, no-win
Schizophrenogenic mother
Cold, dominant, rejecting
High expressed emotion
Conflict, expressed emotion, concern, hostility
Cognitive
Distorted & dysfunctional thinking
Attention deficit theory
No filter, overload
Faulty meta-representation
Dysfunctional, mislabelling

5. Highlight/ underline in a colour the key words to check you have them all in your notes
Family Relationships
Double bind
Contradictory, conflicting, no-win
Schizophrenogenic mother
Cold, dominant, rejecting
High expressed emotion
Conflict, expressed emotion, concern, hostility
Cognitive
Distorted & dysfunctional thinking
Attention deficit theory
No filter, overload
Faulty meta-representation
Dysfunctional, mislabelling

6. Quick homework for next lesson
Use your booklet to summarise the research to support psychological explanations

8. Psychological explanations What can you remember?
Cognitive
Family

9. Research kahoot!

10. Other evaluation Family Why is cause and effect an issue?
Could this theory have a negative impact on schizophrenic patients?
Cognitive
What symptoms can/can’t it explain?
Limited view
- How is this a limited view?
- Link to the diathesis-stress model

11. Interactionist approach to explaining schizophrenia
Diathesis-stress model
What is this? What do you remember from AS? (hint. we talked about it when we studied OCD)
How would this explain schizophrenia? + =

12. (to be shared with the rest of the class)
Application
In pairs write a scenario showing either the family or cognitive explanation causing a person to develop schizophrenia!
(to be shared with the rest of the class)
Use the biological one we looked at as inspiration
Ben comes from a family with a history of schizophrenia, as both his twin brother and father have been diagnosed with the disorder. Ben used to be a keen footballer but has recently quit the team he has been a member of for 10 years; he also seems to have lost interest in his college work and has stopped attending lessons. Ben’s mother is becoming frustrated as some days he refuses to even out of bed and she is also concerned as she found some drugs in Ben’s bedroom when she was cleaning which she does not think are a legal prescription.
Ben recently reported to his GP that he has been hearing a voice telling him he is useless and that people outside of his house want to hurt him.