Outline and evaluate two or more biological explanations for schizophrenia.

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. MZ twins share 100% of their genes; DZ twins share 50% of their genes. If genes are a factor we would expect more identical twins to share the disorder than nonidentical. Rosenthal took a case study which had a set of female quadruplets. They all developed schizophrenia although the onset and symptoms were very different. This could have been a result of having a troubled upbringing. This suggests a strong heritable component. Further, Joseph calculated concordance rates of 40.4% for MZ twins and 7.4% for DZ twins. However, most first degree relatives and twins share the same or similar environments so it is difficult to separate genetic and environmental influences. Because of the difficulties of disentangling genetic and environmental influences for individuals who share genes and environment, studies of genetically related individuals who have been reared apart are used. Tienari et al conducted a longitudinal study and found that out of 164 adoptees whose biological mothers had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, 11 (6.7%) also received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, compared to just four (2%) of the 197 control adoptees (born to nonschizophrenic mothers). This suggests that genes rather than the environment have caused the disorder in these cases. It supports the importance of genetic factors and is evidence against the role of nurture. However, adopted twins may have still shared

Outline and evaluate two or more biological explanations for schizophrenia.

similar environments. Even when the adopted environments are similar, there is still the shared experience in the womb and at birth so pre-natal viruses or birth trauma may have had an effect. Overall the evidence suggests that genes play a part but nature cannot completely explain schizophrenia as there is not a 100% concordance rate. Nurture needs to be considered and the evidence suggests environmental factors must play a part. Without knowing the specific genes involved we cant explain how these contribute to the development of schizophrenia, however the current advances in research into the mapping of genes may bring more insight to the process. Schizophrenia has also been explained by brain chemistry. There are certain chemical abnormalities that can be observed to produce schizophrenia-like states. For example, prolonged use of LCD or ant abuse which is a drug used for alcoholism. Genetics may have an effect through body chemistry. The original dopamine hypothesis suggested that schizophrenia is associated with an excess of the neurotransmitter dopamine causing neurones to fire too often and transmit too many messages. A more recent version says that rather than an excess of dopamine it is an excess of dopamine receptor cells (D2 receptors) that lead to more firing and excess messages. Dopamine neurones play a key role in guiding attention so disturbances in this process may lead to the problems of attention and thought found in people with schizophrenia. Antipsychotic drugs block the activity of dopamine in the brain and eliminate symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions (they are used to treat many schizophrenics); therefore this provides strong evidence for dopamine being a significant contributory factor for schizophrenia. It reinforces the fact that there may well be a causal relationship between dopamine message overload and schizophrenia. However, not all schizophrenic patients respond to these drugs. L DOPA is a drug used to treat Parkinsons disease. It increases dopamine levels. It

Outline and evaluate two or more biological explanations for schizophrenia.

has a side effect which is similar to schizophrenic type symptoms. Grilly (2002) found that some people who were taking the drug L-dopa to raise their levels of dopamine were developing schizophrenic type symptoms. However not all individuals treated with these drugs develop the side effects. Amphetamines increase dopamine (they are a dopamine agonist) large doses of the drug can cause characteristics of schizophrenia such as hallucinations and delusions. This therefore suggests that the increased dopamine level is likely to be linked to the disorder. Torrey found that on average the ventricles of a schizophrenic are about 15% bigger than normal people. Methodological issues for the twin and adoption studies include the fact they are often small samples as MZ twins are relatively rare in the population. With Gottesmans study there were only 12 pairs of twins that have been reared apart. This means the findings cant be generalised to the entire population. Population validity may be low as a result. Adoption samples do tend to have bigger samples which is good but the longitudinal study by Tienari suffered from attrition. There is also a problem in longitudinal adoption studies that the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia have changed significantly over time. Wahlberg et al, re-analysed data from Tienari et al to show rather less support for genetic factors than the original researchers claimed. This shows that the data of genetics in relation to schizophrenia are inconsistent. Assumptions are made that the adoptive parents of children who have a schizophrenic parent would be no different to the adoptive parents of children with a normal parent. In countries like Denmark and Finland, potential adoptive parents would have been informed about the genetic background of the child before actually adopting.

Outline and evaluate two or more biological explanations for schizophrenia.

With advanced genetic techniques it is now more accurate to determine whether twins are MZor DZ but this may not have been as accurate in the earlier studies. Not all studies have samples that have been diagnosed by the same criteria because of the various editions of DSM and ICD. Also, concordance rates can be calculated in different way and scores very widely depending which method is used. Well controlled studies appear to result in lower concordance rates, for example, where they use a blind design and the interviewer does not know the diagnosis of the patient. Methodological criticisms of brain chemistry include good, objective, scientific data as the neurochemicals can be accurately measured. However, because the data is correlational you cant apply cause and effect; does increased dopamine cause schizophrenia or does schizophrenia cause increased dopamine or does a third factor cause them both. There is a flaw with one of the key pieces of evidence to support the dopamine hypothesis. The drugs used to treat schizophrenia by blocking the dopamine receptors can actually increases it as neurons struggle to compensate for the sudden deficiency. Haracz, in a review of post-mortem studies of schizophrenics, found that most of those studied who showed elevated dopamine levels had received antipsychotic drugs shortly before death, unlike post-mortem of schizophrenics who hadnt received medication these results showed that these individuals had normal levels of dopamine. Therefore, this evidence weakens the support for the dopamine hypothesis. Further, Copolov and Crook failed to find convincing evidence of altered dopamine activity in the brains of individuals with schizophrenia. As a result of this, this seems to disprove the dopamine hypothesis further as this was one of the key features for the explanation.

Outline and evaluate two or more biological explanations for schizophrenia.

There is conflicting evidence for the view that enlarged ventricles lead to schizophrenia. Copolov and Crook conducted a Meta analysis of over 90 CT scans and found a substantial overlap between schizophrenic and control groups in terms of ventricle size. Consequently, this theory is flawed as consistent evidence has not been found yet. There is evidence to suggest the enlarged ventricles are actually due to the antipsychotic drugs. Lyon found that as the dose of medication increased, the density of brain tissue decreased which lead to enlarged ventricles. Therefore, this research seems to suggest that one of the biological treatments of schizophrenia could actually be making the patients symptoms, especially negative symptoms of schizophrenia, worse.

Genes and biochemical explanations are firmly rooted in the biological approach. They are reductionist as these explanations reduce the complex disorder of schizophrenia to an oversimplified explanation in terms of genes and biochemicals. For example, the raised dopamine levels only explain the positive symptoms and not the negative; we would expect negative symptoms to be associated with low levels of dopamine. This suggests that biological explanations do not give a complete picture as they focus on nature and ignore the role of nurture. Gottesmans 1991 data shows that the concordance rate for siblings is 9%, for DZ twins it is 17%. Siblings are no more genetically similar than DZ twins, so the doubling of risk for DZ twins indicates there must be something in their shared upbringing that contributes to the disease. Further, the genetic explanation is deterministic as it suggests that those with a genetic vulnerability have an increased risk of schizophrenia, which ignores their free will to create a psychologically healthy environment, for example one low in communication deviance ( a tendency to communicate in unclear and confusing ways). This criticism can be countered because it can be argued that if you are

Outline and evaluate two or more biological explanations for schizophrenia.

genetically predisposed to schizophrenia then you do not have a great deal of control over whether you develop the disorder or not. Lastly, the diathesis stress model suggests that we have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia and it takes an environmental trigger for the disease to show itself for example stressful living conditions or family communication difficulties. Clearly an interaction of nature and nurture takes place and it is not nature alone.