Analysis of the Biological Method

Analysis of the Biological Method

The first one is infection. This explanation says that an infection

can cause mental illness. This can be explained by a study through

which it was proven, that babies who’s mother had the flu when they

were pregnant, had a much greater risk of developing schizophrenia

when they grew up. In other words, contracting illness or disease

could mean that you have a greater chance of developing symptoms of

abnormality. Meaning perhaps that illness or disease could affect the

chemical make up of the brain and therefore could cause abnormality in

some way. There is another example of a study in the nineteenth

century. Syphilis was found to lead to brain deterioration which then

led to psychotic behaviours such as delusions and other things.

Then there is another explanation, involving genetics. It says that

people inherit genes through reproduction and that these genes cause

abnormality. So for instance, a grandparent could have had

schizophrenia and it could have passed through one generation without

resurfacing but then could come through and resurfaced in their

grandchildren. There have been plenty of studies into identical twins

compared with fraternal twins to try and justify this assumption. Most

of these studies have shown a distinct positive correlation when each

identical twin is studied to see whether they at some point become

mentally ill. Most studies show that if one identical twin becomes

mentally ill, the other has a very high chance of doing the same.

Whereas with fraternal twins this is not so much the case. An

Identical twin is around five times more likely to become ill if the

other twin does than if they were fraternal twins. Related to this

also, is adoption studies. It is another study to try and prove this

theory. Adoption studies show that if an adopted child contracts a

mental illness then the biological parents are far more likely to have

an illness to, rather than the adoptive parents.

The next biological model theory is biochemical.