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Patient-Environment Relationships in Schizophrenia

Information Processing, Communication Deviance, Autonomic Arousal, and Stressful Life Events

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

Keith H. Nuechterlein ,
Michael J. Goldstein ,
Joseph Ventura ,
Michael E. Dawson  and
Jeri A. Doane
Keith H. Nuechterlein
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry
Michael J. Goldstein
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology
Joseph Ventura
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of California Los Angeles
Michael E. Dawson
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California
Jeri A. Doane
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Yale University
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Extract

The general view that relationships between factors within the patient and those in the environment are important in understanding schizophrenia has been widely accepted and is the basis for vulnerability/stress models of this disorder. However, the specifics of the patient-environment relationships that may be critical for schizophrenia continue to be largely a mystery. At the UCLA Clinical Research Center for the Study of Schizophrenia, we have developed a tentative working model of schizophrenic episodes that emphasises the mediating role of information-processing and autonomic abnormalities in the patient in interaction with stressful circumstances and protective factors in the patient's environment (Nuechterlein & Dawson, 1984a; Liberman, 1986; Dawson & Nuechterlein, 1987; Nuechterlein, 1987). Here we examine two examples of patient-environment relationships that may increase our understanding of such processes in schizophrenia.

Information

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. 84 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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