Biological Explanations of Schizophrenia

This essay hasn't yet been marked by one of our teachers

You can view 2 essays on Clinical Psychology that have been Marked by Teachers

The first 200 words of this essay...

Discuss research in biological explanations of schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder involving loss of contact with reality and a range of symptoms. One biological explanation for schizophrenia is that genetic factors are involved. This view considers that certain individual's posses certain genes which predispose an individual to schizophrenia. Furthermore the condition can be inherited and as a result we would expect to find that relatives have similar chances of developing the disorder.

One other biological explanation for schizophrenia is the Viral Hypothesis. This states that schizophrenia is a mental deterioration at an early age. In other words brain damage at the time or before the time of birth could be a factor in the development of schizophrenia. They have enlarged ventricles in their brain and post-mortems have found that their brains are lighter.

There certainly evidence that supports that we can inherit a disposition for schizophrenia through genetic causes. Research to prove this comes twin studies of MZ and DZ twins. Gottesman and Shields found a higher concordance rate of MZ twins both having the disorder than DZ twins who only share 50% of their genes, although the concordance rate was not 100%. This certainly