Interactionist Approach 🔴

What is the interactionist approach of schizophrenia?

Suggests that the development of schizophrenia is due to the combined effects and interaction of biological and social/psychological factors

What is the diathesis stress model?

A psychological concept that a disorder is due to the interaction between a predisposed vulnerability (diathesis) and an environmental trigger later in life (trigger)

Diathesis in schizophrenia…

Often considered to be a genetic vulnerability, potentially resulting in a dopamine imbalance

Now many researchers consider non genetic diathesis, such as flu in pregnant mothers and birth complications. Also very early psychological trauma such as child abuse it thought to influence brain development creating a diathesis

Stressors in schizophrenia…

Later negative environmental experiences such as family dysfunction, emotional stress/anxiety or a major negative life event. This emotional event then triggers the disorder

Drug abuse is also considered a potential stressor, in particular the excessive use of cannabis has been linked to schizophrenia as it interferes with the dopamine system

What is the interactionist approach to treating schizophrenia?

As the interactionist approach suggests there is both a biological and psychological aspect to schizophrenia development, the effective treatment of schizophrenia would combine psychological aspects such as CBT and biological drug therapies to address both causes

In patients with severe schizophrenic symptoms, biological treatments can allow the patient to reduce their symptoms so they can engage with psychological therapies. CBT can then give sufferers the cognitive skills needed to change their underlying faulty cognitions

AO3 - Holistic explanation

As it takes into consideration a complex range of causal factors, it may be a more valid explanation of schizophrenia than reducing the cause of schizophrenia to just certain biological or psychological factors

AO3 - Considers nature nurture

The interactionist approach carefully considers the relative importance of both hereditary and environmental influences

AO3 - Limitation

The fundamental mechanism by which a negative psychological event actually triggers a complex biological response resulting in symptoms is still uncertain, reducing confidence in the interactionist approach as a full explanation for schizophrenia

AO3 - Gottesman (1991)

Reviewed cases of schizophrenia and found a concordance rate of 48% for identical twins (MZ) and 17% for non identical twins (DZ). This compares to the general population rate of 1%. This suggests a role for both biological genetic factors as the concordance rate is much higher for MZ twins who share 100% of their DNA, but as the concordance rates is far less then 100% for MZ twins, this suggests there must be some psychological experience triggered in one twin but not the other

AO3 - Tienari (2004)

Studied the biological children of schizophrenic mothers who had been adopted. It was found that 5.8% of children adopted into psychologically healthy families developed schizophrenia compared to 36.8% of children raised in dysfunctional families. This research supports the influence of biological factors, due to high rate even in psychologically healthy families, but the even higher figure of dysfunctional families suggest a psychological trigger is needed

AO3 - Tarrier (1998)

Patients were randomly placed in routine care (anti psychotics) or routine care and CBT. Patients in the combined treatment had a significant improvement in the severity and number of positive symptoms as well as fewer days in hospital receiving care. This suggests an interactionist approach to treating schizophrenia is more effective than the usual treatment plan of giving anti psychotics alone. Giving support to the overall interactionist theory