Schizophrenia: Interactionist Approach

Last time, we saw study support for the diathesis-stress model:

Tienari et al conducted an adoption study comparing kids whose biological mums had schizophrenia to a control group of adopted children whose biological mums didn’t have schizophrenia.

The children whose biological mums had schizophrenia were more likely to develop the disorder, meaning that gene alleles that they inherited from their mum were a diathesis for schizophrenia.

But, the child’s risk of developing schizophrenia also depended on the environment they grew up in: children only developed schizophrenia if they experienced stress in their adopted family!

This supports the idea that schizophrenia requires both a biological diathesis and an environmental stress to trigger the disorder.

Now, further support for the interactionist explanation comes from a study conducted by Brown and Birley in 1968…

In their study, Brown and Birley investigated individuals who had recently developed schizophrenia…

Brown and Birley conducted interviews with the patients and their families, asking them about the events that had occurred in the past 3 weeks before they had developed schizophrenia.

They found that, in the 3 weeks before the patients developed schizophrenia, 50% of them had experienced a major stressful life event…

Such as the death of a relative, or a new stressful job…

This supports the idea that stress acts as a trigger for the development of schizophrenia.

To sum up, we’ve now seen further support for the interactionist explanation of schizophrenia…

We’ve now seen further support for the interactionist explanation of schizophrenia, from a study by Brown and Birley.

Brown and Birley interviewed patients who had recently developed schizophrenia. 

50% of them had a stressful life event in the 3 weeks prior to symptoms starting…

Which supports the idea that stress triggers schizophrenia.