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Relationship of Schizophrenia to the Environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

Hugh Freeman
Hugh Freeman*
Affiliation:
University of Salford. British Journal of Psychiatry
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Extract

Attention was first drawn to the importance of this topic by Schneider (1957) when he proposed that some of his first-rank symptoms could be grouped together under the concept of ‘permeability’ of the barrier between the individual and his/her environment — the ‘loss of ego boundaries’. Similarly, in a recent series of papers (Strauss et al, 1987), the essence of schizophrenia was conceptualised in the processes of interaction between biology, behaviour, and environment. The two main syndromes — acute and chronic — can each be precipitated or made worse by environmental factors, and although most patients with the negative syndrome appear to show some irreducible impairment, poverty of the social environment has been found to worsen their condition, while on the other hand, a moderate degree of social stimulation promotes relative improvement (Wing, 1987).

Type
IV. From the Perspective of Person-Environment Relationships
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 155 , Issue S5: Schizophrenia as a Systems Disorder: The Relevance of Mediating Processes for Theory and Therapy , July 1989 , pp. 90 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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