Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Biological
explanations for
scizophrenia
- Dopamine Hypothesis
- Parkinson's Disease
- Grilly 2000- found that
people taking L-dopa
drugs (raises dopamine
levels) developed
schizophrenia
- Timmons and Hamilton 1990-
found very few
schizophrenics suffer with
Parkinson's disease.
- Anti-psychotic Drugs
- Barlow and Durand 1995-
reported that
chlorpromazine reduces
schizophrenic symptoms in
60% of cases. Mainly
impacts on positive
symptoms rather than
negative
- Haracz 1982- found
high dopamine levels
in postmortems in
schizophrenics who
had taken medication
shortly before death.
Schizophrenics not
on medication had
normal levels.
- Davis 1978- found that it takes weeks for
the drugs to work, even though dopamine
activity gets blocked immediately
- High Levels of Dopamine
- Jackson 1986-
found no evidence
of high dopamine
levels in
schizophrenics
- Wise and Stein 1973-
low levels of dopamine
Beta hydroxylase in
schizophrenics who
had dies in accidents
- Amphetamines
- Janowski et al 1972- low
doses in normal control
produced slight agitation.
In schizophrenics,
symptoms became worse.
- Timmons and
Hamilton 1990- report
high doses result in
healthy people
displaying
schizophrenic
behaviour
- Enlarged Ventricles
- Torry 2002- on
average, the
ventricles of a
schizophrenic are on
average, 15% larger
than a healthy person
- Bornstein et al 1992-
schizophrenics with
enlarged ventricles are
more likely to display
negative symptoms,
rather than positive
symptoms and don't
respond well to
anti-psychotics
- Copoloy and Crook 2000- meta
analysis of over 90 studies with
CT scans revealed a substantial
overlap between
schizophrenics and control
populations of ventricle size.
- Lyon et al 1991- found that as the
dose of anti-psychotic drugs
increased, the density of brain
tissue decreased, leading to
enlarged ventricles.
- Genetics
- Adoption Studies
- Tienari et al 2000- looked at
164 adoptees with biological
schizophrenic mothers, but only
12 (6.7%) were later diagnosed
with schizophrenia. However,
194 adoptees were looked at as
a control and 4 (2%) were also
diagnosed
- Most adoption studies
looking into schizophrenia
broaden the definition of
schizophrenia to
non-psychotic
schizophrenia spectrum to
get to significant results
- There is an assumption of
adoption studies that the
parents who adopt children
from a schizophrenic
background are the same
as those who adopt
children with a normal
biological background
- Kety et al 1978- looked at
adopted children in Finland
who had developed
schizophrenia. They found
that their biological parents
were more likely to have
schizophrenia than the
parents who adopted the
child and raised them.
- Twin Studies
- Gottesman and Bertelsen
1989- they found that if
your parent had an
identical twin who had
schizophrenia, you have
a 17% chance of
developing it too.
However, if your parent
doesn't have the disorder
but the other twin does,
then you still have a 17%
chance of getting
schizophrenia.
- Due to the fact that this study
was constructed over 20
years ago, it's harder to
generalise to public now. Also,
it was difficult to tell if twins
were MZ or DZ, so the results
may not actually be accurate.
- Gottesman and Shields
1972- looked at 57
schizophrenics between
1958 and 1964. 40% MZ
and 60% DZ. If one twin had
schizophrenia but the other
didn't, it was followed for 13
in case they developed it
later. Concordance eate for
MZ was 42% and DZ 17%.
- Heston 1970- found that if
one MZ twin had
schizophrenia, there is a 90%
probiblility that other twin will
have some sort of mental
disorder.
- Suggests that there is a
genetic link for
schizophrenia but there
are other factors,
otherwise concordance
rate would be 100%