The term ‘schizophrenia' covers a group of serious psychotic disorders characterised by a loss of contact with reality. It comes from two Greek words: schiz meaning ‘split' and phren meaning ‘mind'. DSM IV (1994) estimate that the occurrence rate of schizophrenia ranges from 0.2%-2.0% worldwide. There are two main explanations of schizophrenia: the biological explanations and the psychological explanations. In this essay I will critically consider the biological explanations. These include genetics, neurochemistry, brain structure and evolution.
Genetic factors of schizophrenia can be explained using studies on twins and studies on family history. With twin studies researchers want to establish the degree of concordance. This is the probability that if one twin has the disorder, the other twin will also have it. Monozygotic (MZ) twins share 100% of their genes and dizygotic (DZ) twins share about 50%. Gottesman (1991) summarised 40 twin studies and found that the......

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Title: Critically Consider Biological Explanations Of Schizophrenia
Approximate Word Count: 1958
Approximate Pages: 8 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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