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Biological Explanations to Psychopathology

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Biological Explanations to Psychopathology
Outline and evaluate the biological approach to psychopathology (8 marks)
The biological approach is all to do with the neuroanatomy (brain structure), biochemistry (hormones) and viral infections and genes. It is a reductionist view as it does not look at childhood conflicts (psychodynamic) does not look at cognitive (mind). Genetic inheritance is one, this is when your genes are passed on from your parents to the child. It is normally studied on monozygotic twins, this is because they have the same DNA. Concordance rates for phobias is 45%, quite low however are very high for schizophrenia. It has also been stated that some abnormal genes for your ancestors were advantageous and therefore we have got them. It also to do with the biochemistry, this is for example high serotonin causes anxiety, low causes depression and how schizophrenia patients have a different neuroanatomy as there ventricles are enlarged and cause shrinkage of brain tissue. Viral infections is also one, it has been stated that in utero, (in womb) causes schizophrenia, for example Torrey stated that he looked at mothers and examined them, he found that they had developed an influenza before the baby was born.
However there are evaluation points. It was to do with being inhumane or humane, in the 19th century mental illness was due to inhumane reasons such as the devil. Later they discovered that the patient is the actual cause of it. Thomas Szaz stated that mental illness has no physical basis and therefore is just a form of social control.
They also concluded cause and effect. You do not know whether dopamine caused schizophrenia or the other way round. They found in some patients who had low levels of dopamine, this means that you cannot make a correlation analysis.
There is also inconclusive evidence, this is because Gottesman and Shields stated that there should be a concordance rates of 100% of schizophrenia in monozygotic twins however he only found 50% this meant that genetics is not
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