Description

"This text addresses the basics of developmental psychopathology in a clear manner, with enough detail to facilitate a real understanding of the concepts and their relevance to clinical work with children."
--Christie P. Karpiak, University of Scranton

This introductory undergraduate text on child and adolescent psychopathology adopts a developmental psychopathology approach to understanding child disorders. The author examines the emergence of disorders over time, pays special attention to risk and protective factors that influence developmental processes and trajectories, and examines child psychopathology in the context of normal development.

The author has four main goals: to show students why an understanding of child psychopathology and its treatment might be important to them as future psychologists, social workers, educators, and/or parents; to introduce students to the developmental psychopathology perspective and how it can help organize understanding of childhood disorders; to help students appreciate the interdependence of psychological research and clinical practice; and to engage students in higher-level thinking necessary to analyze information, critically evaluate ideas, and create solutions to real-world problems based on empirically validated findings.

Key Features

• Links research with clinical practice via a focus on evidence-based therapies for childhood disorders, balancing solid empirical science and clinical insights and thus helping students filter clinically valuable findings from those lacking utility
• Emphasizes the developmental perspective to better understand psychopathology, with use of normal development as a lens through which to view abnormal behavior or emotional problems
• Provides case studies and real-life examples in each chapter, allowing the student to understand how the material relates to specific situations
• Incorporates assessment methods into specific content modules rather than isolating assessment as a separate and discrete chapter
• Utilizes smaller, more focused modules to allow for greater flexibility for instructors and students and to avoid the problem (seen in other texts) of lumping dissimilar problems into longer chapters
• Offers end-of-chapter review questions that help students apply, analyze, and evaluate the information in the chapter, requiring them to critically think about the material
• Includes suggested additional readings describing etiological models, empirical studies, or treatment approaches, as well as current research articles.