Patient-Environment Relationships in Schizophrenia

Abstract

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.