There appears to be a tendency for schizophrenia to run in families. This suggests that genes play a role. Gottesman found that schizophrenia is more common among biological relatives of a person with schizophrenia and also that the closer the degree of genetic relatedness, the greater the risk. Gottesman conducted family studies and showed that when both parent are schizophrenic the children have a 46% concordance rate, however, if only one parent had it, it dropped to 16% and dropped to a further 1% when the sibling of the child had schizophrenia. This suggests that a genetic factor is involved.
Essay Plan Biological Explanations of Schizophrenia 1. Describe in some detail the genetic factors- family studies- Gottesman found that schizophrenia is more common among biological relatives of a person with schizophrenia and also that the closer the degree of genetic relatedness, the greater the risk. For instance, children with 2 schizophrenic parents have a concordance rate of 46%, children of one schizophrenic parent 13% and siblings 9%. Although this could be due to common rearing patterns or other factors not relating to heredity. Twin studies- Joseph calculated concordance rates of 40.4% for MZ twins and 7.4% for DZ twins.
Berger found that schizophrenics reported a higher recall of double-bind statements by their mothers than non-schizophrenics. However this evidence might not be reliable, as patients recall may be affected by their schizophrenic. Other studies are less supportive. Liem measured patterns of parental communications in families of schizophrenic children and found no difference when compared with normal children. Expressed emotion (EE) involves high levels of negative emotion (e.g.
It was found that having an identical twin with schizophrenia gave you a 48% chance of developing the condition. This reduced to 17% in non-identical twins. They concluded that schizophrenia has a strong genetic basis, however, if it was entirely down to genetics, we would expect this figure to be 100% for identical twins. The meta analysis was carried out on field experiments, so has high ecological validity. The fact that both twins wouldn’t always develop schizophrenia means that another factor must be involved, for example family environment.
A family study conducted by Gottesman reported that the rate of schizophrenia in the general population is 1% whereas the rate in people where both parents suffer in 46%. He also found that if one parent suffered the rate was 13%. Gottesman concluded that the closer the bloodline the higher the risk. He and Shields then conducted a study on the concordance rates of schizophrenia in 40 sets of twins. They found that in dizygotic twins the rate
The biological explanations for depression centre on the mood disorder being biologically caused. Genetic factors suggest that you are born with a biological weakness which makes you unable to resist stressors, which consequently leads to depression. This is known as the diathesis stress model. The main piece of research that supports this comes from the Maudsley Hospital twin register, where concordance rates of 46% were found in MZ twins and 20% in DZ twins. This suggest that depression must be passed on through genes if there is a high concordance rate between twins which share the same genetic makeup both having depression.
However, with the help of tutoring and therapy, a person with Down Syndrome can succeed in school and join the working world. There is little people can do to prevent Trisomy 21 in their children. Genetic counseling, which is recommended for people who have a family history of genetic disorders, is one of the few ways. Also, the older in age a mother is, the greater the risk for her children to be born with Trisomy 21. The amount of people with Trisomy 21 differs in each country.
In 75% of all cases in a twin study indicate ADHD is heritable and genetics are a factor. Twin studies have implicated environment factors into the development of ADHD. Studies have found that a moderate-to-significant proportion of susceptibility to ADHD may be accounted for by factors that are not shared by both twins. Non-shared factors may include poor school performance, difficult temperament-inflated self-esteem, impulsivity, low verbal intelligence, and biological events such as prenatal insult and head
Some psychologists say that schizophrenia can be inherited from their parents. Twin research has shown that identical twins have a greater risk of developing schizophrenia, if their twin has the
Many research studies have shown that, on average, children of divorce have more behavior problems than children growing up in two-parent families. But the question for social scientists is whether the problems seen in the children of divorced parents were caused by the divorce, or whether something else caused BOTH the divorce and the children's problems. Researchers wonder, in particular, whether some couples have personal characteristics and/or parenting patterns that increase the chance that their children will have behavior problems AND ALSO increase the chance that the couple will be unable to resolve marital issues. If this "something else" causes both divorce and behavior problems, then it is likely that that children would still have had problems even if their parents had somehow managed to remain married. How do we look for that "something else"?