Outline and evaluate psychological explanations of schizophrenia.

There are several psychological explanations put forward in an attempt to explain schizophrenia as a mental disorder. This essay will focus on how the behavioural and cognitive models explain schizophrenia. The behaviourists believe that schizophrenia is a learned condition rather than a mental illness with a physical cause. They suggest that these behaviours are learned through operant conditioning where desirable behaviours are reinforced through awards. In this case, abnormal behaviours being the desirable behaviour and the increased attention gained being the reward. Ullman and Krasner (1969) found that hospital staff reinforced Sz behaviour in their patients by paying more attention to those who displayed characteristics of the disorder, this increased attention led the others to increase such odd behaviours and eventually leading to psychosis. Therefore suggesting that schizophrenia is nothing but a learned maladaptive behaviour. Tarrier et al found a support to this explanation where he discovered that schizophrenics randomly assigned to behavioural intervention treatments (derived from this behavioural explanation) had a lower relapse rate compared to those using more usual treatments. This suggests a strong behavioural component to the disorder. This explanation has proven to be useful once again in the invention of the idea of token economies. This is used with the schizophrenics to encourage normal behaviour where they are rewarded with token that can be exchanged for desirable goods for every sign of normal behaviour. This method of treatment showed a general success, which yet again suggests a behavioural component to this disorder. However behaviourism cannot explain why many schizophrenics exhibit similar symptoms without ever having witnessed such behaviour before or why the disorder only begins to occur in late adolescence. Therefore, this explanation is criticized to be a reductionist where it is seen to simplify a distressing condition to an attention seeking strategy and suggests that there should be an explanation to explain schizophrenia better. Cognitive models seem to provide a wider understanding of the causes of schizophrenia unlike the other models that focus mostly on the symptoms of the disorder, and the fact that it possesses empirical evidence to back up their claims suggests that it can be considered as a better explanation. The cognitive theories focus on the impaired thought processes that characterize schizophrenia, for example the cognitive deficit model that focuses on the lack of selective attention. This idea is supported by Hemsleys model, which states that some of the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia arise from the disconnection between the stored knowledge and the sensory input. It suggests that schizophrenics cannot differentiate between schemas and new situations, which creates a sensory overload where they cannot selectively attend to information.

This causes delusional thinking, loose association and non-sequential thought patterns: symptoms of schizophrenia. Liddle & Morriss study provides a strong support to Hemsleys model where they found that schizophrenics perform poorly on stroop task suggesting that the positive symptoms of schizophrenia involve a failure of willed action with behaviour therefore they are being determined by irrelevant stimuli, as they cannot decide which information to attend to and which to ignore (free will vs. determinism) yet again reiterating the fact that schizophrenics cannot selectively attend (basis of cognitive explanation). However Hemsleys model suggests that the abnormalities in the hypothalamus, which leads to, this disconnection between the stores in the first place, is due to a physiological cause. This suggests that this explanation acknowledges the involvement of a biological factor therefore gives us the impression that it takes a wider perception to explain schizophrenia and thus can be quite accurate. However, the evidence collected to explain this physiological cause, MeyerLinderberg found a link between excess dopamine in pre-frontal cortex and poor working memory, is only a correlation and thus we cannot determine whether it is a cause or a consequence as it can be seen as a reductionist. All in all, Garety et al found evidence that suggests that schizophrenia will be best understood by considering both biological and psychological factors. This introduces the concept of diathesis stress model, an integrative model that represents the interaction between nature (genetics) and nurture (environment). This model suggests that stressful life events trigger psychotic symptoms in individuals with an underlying biological predisposition to schizophrenia. This idea can be used to explain schizophrenia from a wider perspective and has led to some successful treatments being derived which combine both biological and psychological therapies. Overall, these psychological explanations only focus on environmental factors but we cannot ignore the role of genetics in order to get an insight to this disorder. Therefore a combination both psychological approach and the biological approach will give a more holistic view of schizophrenia.