Describe and evaluate the causes of mental disorders from two different approaches

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There have been many attempts to explain the causes of abnormality.

According to the Biological approach there are four main causes for mental disorders.

The biological model says that one of the causes is our genetics. Psychologists use different types of studies to show this.

Family history studies are used to compare members of the same family for the occurrence of a particular disorder like bipolar.

Twin studies are used to compare monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (non identical) twins for a particular mental disorder. Zimbardo’s statistics for a genetic link for schizophrenia is 48% for MZ twins, 17% for DZ twins and 9% for siblings. This shows that it is more likely that a person will develop schizophrenia if they are a MZ twin rather than a DZ twin or sibling. A reason for this could be because MZ twins are more likely to be brought up in similar conditions than DZ twins or siblings. However, schizophrenia cannot be entirely genetic otherwise the concordance of MZ twins would be 100%.

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Adoption studies compare the biological parents and the adoptive parents to the child for example to test for schizophrenia or bipolar.

Another cause for mental disorders according to the biological model is biochemistry. This is when there is a chemical imbalance in the brain. An example of this is low levels of serotonin can cause depression.  

The third cause is brain damage. This can be either through disease or accident. An example is Alzheimer’s disease which is a form of dementia caused by the malformation and loss of cells in a number of areas of the nervous ...

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A reasonable level of understanding demonstrated with an attempt to evaluate explanations of causes of mental disorders. Develop the argument and explain the reasons for a higher mark. 3 Stars