Interactionist explanation and treatments

Diathesis stress model

A model that suggests that a combination of a genetic predisposition coupled with a stress trigger can cause the onset of the condition

Meehl

Developed the original diathesis stress model and suggested that there was a “schizogene” which would cause the condition to occur when there was enough stress. If the gene was not present then schizophrenia would never be developed regardless of the amount of stress present.

Read

Proposed a neurodevelopmental model in which trauma affects the developing brain e.g. causing the HPA system which regulates stress in the body to become overactive permanently which then increases vulnerability to the condition when later stress occurs

Houston

Stress is any environmental factor which raises the risk of schizophrenia. For example, modern research has suggested that cannabis usage increases the risk of schizophrenia by up to seven times

Turkington

The appropriate treatment for schizophrenia is a combination of medication and CBT. People can believe in the psychological symptoms (which are treated by CBT) and the biological causes (which are treated by medication) at the same time

Tienari et al

Adopted Finnish children with schizophrenic biological mothers were compared to a control group of adopted children with no family history and found that the children with the genetic predisposition who lived in harsh adoptive families developed schizophrenia at a much higher rate

Tarrier et al

315 patients were randomly allocated to 1 of 3 conditions: medication + CBT, medication + counselling and a control group. Participants in both experimental conditions showed much lower symptom levels