Relatives, schizophrenia and ideology: a sociological analysis of relatives conceptions of schizophrenia

Abstract

Interviews with 20 relatives of persons with schizophrenia, all of whom was connected with the Wellington branch of the Schizophrenia Fellowship, were held. Participant observation at the Fellowship's contact centre provided a useful secondary source of data. The research was undertaken in 1984. The study investigates the conceptions of schizophrenia held by relatives, and the interplay between such conceptions and the view of schizophrenia currently dominant within the profession of psychiatry. This dominant psychiatric conception, known as the biopsychiatric view, is critically examined, in particular with regard to its position within the scientific paradigm of modern medicine. It was found that relatives, like psychatrists, favour a medical interpretation of the problem behaviours known as schizophrenia. The sociological notion of ideology was utilized in analysing the functions for relatives and for psychiatrists of adherence to the biopsychiatric view of schizophrenia. The study attempts an explanation of why in recent decades, behavioural disorders such as schizophrenia are viewed as physical disease entities, in spite of the continuing elusiveness of firm evidence of organic pathology.