Causes of Schizophrenia (unfinished)

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  • Created by: BecsaBabe
  • Created on: 29-01-16 12:47
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  • Causes of Schizophrenia
    • Social Causation Hypothesis
      • A01
        • Environmental Breeder Hypthesis
          • Being lower class males you more venerable to schizophrenia due to stress
            • due to unemployment, poor housing and low social status
        • Schizophrenia is more common in urban areas
      • A02
        • Cause and effect hard to establish
          • Might be stress from the environment causing schizophrenia rather than the environment itself
        • Doesn't explain why drugs work when excess dopamine isn't the cause
        • Lower class sufferers treated differently
        • Eaton - reported on 17 studies, high rates of schizophrenia in lower classes
        • Doesn't follow stressful events such as the great depression
    • Dopamine Hypothesis
      • A01
        • Caused by high levels of dopamine in the brain
          • mesolimbic = positive symptoms
          • mesocortical = negative symptoms
        • when given amphetamines symptoms get worse
        • When given L-DOPA it was used up more quickly in schizophrenia patients suggesting they have more dopamine in their brains
        • Some dopamine agonists don't induce the symptoms
      • A02
        • Iverson - post-mortems show high levels of dopamine in schizophrenics
        • Drugs reduce positive symptoms but not negative symptoms as well so not a full explaination
        • Anti schizophrenic drugs cause symptoms similar to Parkinson desease which is caused by lack of dopamine
        • May be a result of being schizophrenic, not a cause
        • Takes up to 4 weeks to see improvements when the drugs take action immediately.
        • Randrup and Munkvad found that by giving amphetamines  to rats it increases schizophrenic symptoms supporting dopamine hypothesis

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