ABSTRACT
Attribution of self-blame has been investigated in a whole range of areas including self-blame for spinal injury and self-blame in mothers of developmentally disordered children for their child’s disorder. Professionals involved in their child’s care typically discouraged behavioural attributions and encourage attributions to chance. K. G. Shaver and D. Drown are critical of the confusion in the literature about the terms causality, responsibility and self blame in literature on attribution theory. Traditional family intervention in Expressed Emotion work is a psycho-educational model helping to shape the family’s view of the disorder, to put into context the schizophrenic family member’s behaviour and to develop coping skills. In short, such an educational programme should have a powerful influence on the family’s attributional style and content. The most effective method was ‘supportive suggestion’ in which the therapist encouraged internal attribution for positive events and external attribution for negative events.
