Discuss the factors thought to underline schizophrenia

Essay by LolaZCollege, UndergraduateC+, April 2013

download word file, 7 pages 0.0

Downloaded 2 times

Schizophrenia is known to be the most disturbing and bizarre psychological disorder among all other psychological disorders. Despite wide research into the field, the exact definition for schizophrenia has not yet been made. It is however known, that schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterised by a wide range of symptoms to include positive symptoms, such as hallucinations, disorganised thoughts and behaviours. There are also several negative symptoms, such as social and emotional withdraw, alogia and avolition (Gross, 2005.). Schizophrenia is diagnosed with the help of DSM-IV- TR, which outlines the characteristics of the disorder, as well as describes how to diagnose the disorder among the patients. DSM-IV-TR also carefully describes the subtypes of schizophrenia, such as Paranoid schizophrenia or catatonic schizophrenia. Although schizophrenia only affects 1% of the population, the severe disturbances of the affected people have made the researchers look carefully into what causes schizophrenia, and how it could be potentially treated.

Claridge & Davies (2003) describe schizophrenia as being heterogeneous, which makes almost certain, that single explanations will not succeed in explaining the causes of schizophrenia. There are many different explanations that explain schizophrenia, but it is the biological explanations that have received the most support. This essay will mainly focus on biological factors that are thought to underline schizophrenia, but the environmental and psychological factors will also be mentioned. By looking at the evidence for and against, it will be easier to establish which explanations are more efficient, and offer better explanations of schizophrenia.

One of the most supported biological factors that underline schizophrenia are genes. It has been found that being related to someone with schizophrenia can significantly increase the likelihood of a person's chance of developing the disorder themselves (Passer et al, 2009.)It is known that humans share 50% genes from mother and 50%...