The biological approach is a way of looking at abnormality that assumes that psychological disorders are physical illnesses with physical causes. According to the biological approach, the cause of a psychopathology is to with genetics, neurotransmitters, infection or brain injury. Faulty genes are known to cause some diseases that have psychological effects, such as Huntington’s disease (leads to a deterioration of mental abilities), and Schizophrenia (leading to symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions and disorganised behaviour.) A key study into the genetic basis of schizophrenia was done by Gottesman et al, who did a meta-analysis of 40 twin studies. It was found that having an identical twin with schizophrenia gave you a 48% chance of developing the condition.
Discuss the Biological Explanations of Schizophrenia. (8+16 marks) The Biological approach to schizophrenia states that the disorder is due to an organic cause. Considerable evidence suggests that the illness is due to genetics. Genetics can be studied as a cause through family, twin or adoption studies. 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%.
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.
of depression or schizophrenia. According to the biological model, the presence of certain genes can predispose people to psychological disorders. In other words, certain genes can make people more vulnerable to disorders. Twin and family studies have confirmed that some mental illnesses run in families. In terms of biochemistry, chemical imbalances in the brain may be involved in certain mental illnesses.
However this does not take into account free will: we can choose whether or not to carry out an action. Additionally Theilgaard (1984) found that genetics are far more complex and other factors have to be taken into account. Theilgaard examined prisoners with the XYY gene and compared their traits to those with XY gene. Using projective tests, it was found that some XYY prisoners did give
Outline and evaluate the biological approaches to causes of abnormality (12marks) The biological approach to abnormality sees mental disorders as caused by abnormal physiological processes such as genetic and biochemical factors. The physical features of the causes of a mental disorder according to the biological approach suggest that abnormality could be affected by brain damage. Abnormal behaviour may occur if the brain’s structure is damaged in some way. Once the disease or brain damage has caused the mental deterioration there is nothing can really be done to stop the damage going any further. Extreme use of alcohol and other drugs can damage the brain and can sometimes cause hallucinations or other symptoms of a mental disorder but is only usually caused by excessive use of alcohol and drugs.
This caused the production of an inefficient CYP2C9 enzyme and as a result Henry was considered to be a poor metabolizer. 3. The function of a coding strand is the strand that is going to be transcribed. The function of a template strand is the complementary strand from the coding strand. The template strand is what is used as a template in the synthesis of
Interpretivist sociologists would choose to not use lab experiments because they lack ecological validity as they are conducted within an environment that is artificial to the participant. This means that the results don’t reflect true-life behaviour because of both the environment they conducted the task in, and the nature of the task wasn’t true to real life and can also be said to not be generalisable to a population because of their small sample sizes in which lab experiments are conducted. Furthermore, participants might have been aware that they were being studied and so might not act normally, which is called the Hawthorne effect. Another reason why interpretivist sociologists don’t choose to use lab experiments is that they say human behaviour cannot be measured or explained in terms of cause and effect, and instead humans act in terms of feeling, choices and also individual motives. Society doesn’t lend itself to be studied in a laboratory and this is because it is so complex and cannot be artificially created.
Also in this study there wasn’t a direct way of measuring immune function and is only an indirect study. Another criticism is that this study doesn’t tell us which stress index element is the most important it merely concludes that both life stress as well as negative emotions can effect the immune system. This however is valid in that it measured health outcomes showing a relationship between life stress and illness. Kiecolt-Glaser et al. investigated the effects of naturalistic stressors on measure of immunity.
al., showed that identification of facial expression and emotional prosody is likely to be impaired in those diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The study involved 25 in-patients who had paranoid schizophrenia, 25 normal control participants, and 25 depressive in-patients. Those with paranoid schizophrenia performed worse than the other two groups. The study supported other previously made hypotheses and seemed to be accurate. However, the study could have used more patients to ensure even greater accuracy.