OCR Psychology A Level Book 2 sample

Biographical notes Irving Gottesman is most well known for his extensive research into the genetic basis of schizophrenia, particularly undertaking twin research. He has produced several books and over 290 research papers on the subject. He won many awards for his research, including the highest award achievable from the American Psychiatric Association . background Key research The medical model Topic 2 Irving Gottesman, Thomas Laursen, Aksel Bertelsen and Preben Mortensen (2010) Severe mental disorders in offspring with 2 psychiatrically ill parents. Archives of General Psychiatry , 67, (3), 252–257. The specification requires that you know one piece of key research for each topic. On this spread we take a look at the key research by Irving Gottesman et al . on the genetic nature of mental illness. For the exam you need to be able to link the key research to the topic (the medical model) and link the key research to methodological issues and debates. These links are considered on the next spread. Method The study used secondary data from a database holding information about a cohort of the Danish population (a ‘cohort’ is a group of people born between two given dates). Sample The secondary data came from two sources: • The Danish Civil Registration System which holds information about all people born in Denmark, including the identity of parents and siblings. For their study, the researchers selected participants from this register who were born between 1968 and 1997. • The Danish Psychiatric Central Register which contains information on about 650,000 patients who were admitted into a psychiatric hospital, with 2.8 million separate psychiatric admissions (this means some people may have had more than one admission). This covers all of the psychiatric admissions in Denmark from 1970 to 2007. These admissions were based on ICD-8 or ICD-10, depending on the years that were being studied. Participants were only included if they were aged 10 and over by 1 January 2007. This produced a total of 3,391,018 people from Denmark. This included 2,685,301 offspring plus their parents. Participants were considered within four main groups. Groups 1 and 2 had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital diagnosed with either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Groups 3 and 4 were two control groups that represented baseline measurements from the general population. 1. Couples who had both been admitted—that is 279 couples and their 416 children. 2. Couples where one partner had been admitted—that is 20,001 couples and their 37,030 children. 3. A group with neither parent having had any mental illness (cleaned population). 4. A group where there was no data on diagnoses (uncleaned population—because this group is likely to have included some people whose parents had experienced mental illness). Procedure Data on each offspring was linked with their parents’ psychiatric history. Using the Civil Registration the researchers were able to establish who their parents were and were then able to see if their parents were also on the Psychiatric Register. Using the Psychiatric Register, the researchers identified any person with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and/or major depression . Background and aims Research has shown that when one parent has a mental illness the risk of their child having a mental illness increases. Past research into families where both parents have a disorder have used small samples and therefore lack generalisability . Aims The aim of this study was to use a larger sample than previous research had used to investigate the likelihood of offspring being diagnosed with schizophrenia , bipolar disorder or another disorder if one or both of their parents have been diagnosed with one of these serious mental illnesses. Specifically, the researchers looked at genetic links between close relatives—not just to see if the specific genes for one disorder (such as schizophrenia) were passed on but to see if some of the same genes underlie more than one disorder. Furthermore they considered whether a ‘double dose’ of abnormal genes from both parents (rather than just one) would increase the risk. Gottesman et al . (2010) on Genetic explanations Chapter 1: Issues in mental health 28