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Compare and Contrast Psychological and Biological Explanations of Schizophrenia

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Compare and contrast psychological and biological explanations of schizophrenia.
Jessica F Smith
University Of Sussex

Schizophrenia has been termed a heterogeneous group of disorders with varied etiologies (Walker, Kestler, Bollini, & Hochman, 2004) which includes biological, social, cognitive and psychodynamic perspectives. To progress knowledge of schizophrenia, this essay focuses on how the biological and psychological explanations are independent and interdependent and how they may differentiate from one another. This includes: how our biological predisposition, neuro transmitter dysfunction and genetic inheritance, affects how people with schizophrenia respond to social environments, the importance of socio-economic factors and their ability to shape psychotic symptoms, and how people with schizophrenia have faulty cognitions, which arguably develop from social influence and upbringing. The overruling theory, that is important in explanations of schizophrenia, is known as the Diathesis Stress Model (Davey, 2011), which identifies that psychotic symptoms arise from a combination of both biological predisposition and environmental stress.

Servan-Schreiber, Bruno, Carter, & Cohen, (1998) alleviate that dopamine is an important neurotransmitter with a function in regulating movement and guiding attention. The dopamine hypothesis suggests that the dysfunction of movement and attention in those with schizophrenia may be a result of excess dopamine due to an increase of dopamine receptors in the brain (Laruelle, Abi-dargham, Gil, Kegeles, & Innis, 1999). Gurevich & Joyce (1997) studied the post mortems of people with schizophrenia which provided evidence of excess dopamine receptors in the brain. The main discovery of the dopamine hypothesis comes from drug research of neuroleptic drugs, found to block dopamine receptors which reduced the

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