Family Dysfunction Explanations

Question 1

What is meant by ‘Family Dysfunction Explanations’?

Answer 1

• Family Dysfunctions suggests that unhealthy or abnormal relationships and patterns of communication, cold parenting, and high levels of expressed emotion within families cause stress. This stress then influences or causes schizophrenia.

Question 2

What is meant by a ‘Schizophrenogenic Mother’?

Answer 2

• A mother who is cold, rejecting and controlling.

Question 3

What is meant by ‘Double- blind situations’?

Answer 3

• Social interactions in which an individual is repeadetley exposed to conflicting instructions, without having the opportunity to adequately respond to those instructions, or to ignore them.

Question 4

How does the schizophrenogenic mother explain schizophrenia?

Answer 4

• They are cold and rejecting which causes a family climate of tension and secrecy which leads to distrust. this then later develops into paranoid delusions and then schizophrenia.

Question 5

How is the Double blind theory thought to explain schizophrenia?

Answer 5

• Research emphasised the role if communication style within a family.
• They believed that the developing child regularly finds themselves trapped in situations where they fear doing the wrong thing, but receive mixed messages about what that is, and feel unable to comment on the unfairness of the situation or seek clarification.
• When they get it ‘wrong’, which is often, the child is punished by the withdrawal of love which leaves them with an understanding of the world as confusing and dangerous - reflects symptoms such as paranoid delusions.