Developmental Psychopathology

Amanda Venta, Carla Sharp, Peter Fonagy, Jack M. Fletcher, Amanda Venta, Carla Sharp, Peter Fonagy, Jack M. Fletcher

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781118686447
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychopathologie

The mainstream upper-level undergraduate textbook designed for first courses in Developmental Psychopathology

Developmental Psychopathology provides a comprehensive introduction to the evolving scientific discipline that focuses on the interactions between the biological, psychological, behavioral, and social contextual aspects of normal and abnormal human development. Designed for advanced undergraduates and early graduate students with no previous engagement with the subject, this well-balanced textbook integrates clinical knowledge and scientific practice to help students understand both how and why mental health problems emerge across the lifespan.

Organized into four parts, the text first provides students with essential background information on traditional approaches to psychopathology, developmental psychopathology (DP), normal development, and insecure attachment. The next section addresses attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and other problems emerging in childhood. Part III covers problems that arise in adolescence and young adulthood, such as depression, suicide, eating disorders, and schizophrenia. The text concludes with a discussion of special topics such as the relation between pathopsychological issues and divorce, separation, and loss. Each chapter includes a visual demonstration of the DP approach, a clinical case, further readings, and discussion questions. Developmental Psychopathology:

• Presents a coherent organization of material that illustrates the DP principle of cutting across multiple levels of analysis
• Covers common psychopathological problems including antisocial behavior, substance use disorders, fear and anxiety, and emerging personality disorders
• Features integrative DP models based on the most recent research in psychopathological disorders
• Provides instructors with a consistent pedagogical framework for teaching upper-level students encountering the discipline for the first time

Developmental Psychopathology is the perfect textbook for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in Child Psychopathology, Abnormal Child Psychology, Clinical Psychology, and Family Dynamics and Psychopathology.

Part I
Background

In these first four chapters, we provide the background you will need for the rest of the book. You will learn first about the ways that mental health practitioners and researchers have thought about and defined psychopathology traditionally (Chapter 1) and also about an alternative approach (Chapter 2) that solves some of the problems identified in the traditional approaches. The approach covered in Chapter 2—called developmental psychopathology—will carry us through the remaining chapters in this book. Throughout this entire book, we will highlight how studying psychopathology goes hand‐in‐hand with studying normal development, or the absence of psychopathology. For that reason, in this introductory part of the book we also include a chapter on normal development (Chapter 3) and a chapter highlighting the essential role of caregiving relationships (Chapter 4), for context. Specifically, in this part of the book, we will cover the following topics:

• Chapter 1. Traditional Approaches to Psychopathology
• Chapter 2. Developmental Psychopathology
• Chapter 3. Normal Development
• Chapter 4. Insecure Attachment and Related Difficulties

Chapter 1
Traditional Approaches to Child Psychopathology

Kiana Wall, Eric Sumlin, and Carla Sharp

Chapter Overview

What is psychopathology? How do we know when a child or adolescent has clinically significant symptoms of a psychological or behavioral disorder? How do we ensure that medical and mental health professionals, patients, and other stakeholders assess for, and communicate about, mental illness in a consistent way? Formal diagnostic systems and other approaches to the classification of psychopathology allow us to answer these questions to varying degrees. In this chapter, we will discuss different approaches to understanding, classifying, and diagnosing psychopathology in children and adolescents. We conclude with a summary of the limitations of each approach and introduce the benefit of a developmental psychopathology approach to conceptualizing psychopathology.

Diagnosis and Classification

Psychopathology is the study of mental disorders. Mental, or psychological, disorders are characterized by behavioral patterns and cognitive, emotional, and physical symptoms that deviate from a normative developmental trajectory and are not typical of individuals living in the same cultural context. “Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress or disability in social, occupational, or other important activities” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 20) because symptoms of mental illness can have serious negative impacts on people’s physical health, education, employment, relationships, and well‐being. Unsurprisingly, then, scientists, philosophers, doctors, and other scholars have taken an interest in psychopathology since ancient times. Historically, how have we decided what psychological symptoms or behaviors are considered abnormal? How do we keep track of this knowledge or information to ensure that everyone with an interest in mental health or a role in treating mental health concerns is educated and “on the same page” when it comes to psychopathology? In the modern era, we have facilitated communication about mental health and tried to understand and organize knowledge about psychopathology using classification systems.

Classification is the act of categorizing things according to a set of criteria. Things in the same category tend to share similar characteristics or features. For example, biologists interested in taxonomy, the science of classification, might classify sea creatures according to dimensions such as size, diet, or gestation process. Classification systems for psychopathology aim to organize the observed symptoms of psychological disorders. The most commonly used and well‐known classification system for mental disorders in the United States (US) is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The most recent version of the DSM, the DSM‐5, contains 22 classes of disorders. Within each class, specific diagnoses are listed and most of these diagnoses list a set of criteria and number of symptoms that must be met for an individual’s functioning to be considered abnormal and for a diagnosis to be given. The diagnoses in each class share similar features. For example, one class of disorders in the DSM‐5 is the anxiety disorders. These disorders “share features of excessive fear and anxiety and related behavioral disturbances” (APA, 2013, p. 189). Diagnoses within the anxiety disorder class differ from one another in the types of situations and objects that cause fear, anxiety, and avoidance behavior, and all the diagnoses within the anxiety disorder class differ from diagnoses in the other classes in important ways. According to the DSM‐5, the organization of symptoms into disorders and disorders into classes based on their shared features is “a historically determined cognitive schema imposed on clinical and scientific information to increase its comprehensibility and utility” (APA, 2013, p. 10). In other words, historical scientific research and clinical wisdom was utilized to organize and classify symptoms in a way that would allow for easier communication between mental health providers, patients, and other stakeholders.

How do classification systems for psychopathology improve our understanding of an individual’s mental illness and communicate about it more easily? Once mental health providers assess for the presence of psychopathological symptoms or observe certain behaviors in their patients, they can use a classification and diagnostic system to organize their findings and come to a differential diagnosis. The process of diagnosing an individual gives mental health providers a starting point, including guidance about the cause of this person’s difficulties, the likely course their symptoms might take, and the outcomes they might experience without intervention. These considerations can have important implications for treatment planning. Classification and diagnostic systems also act as a “shorthand” between providers, with insurance companies, and with government agencies. Rather than describe all the symptoms an individual is experiencing one by one, which could be a time‐consuming process that potentially violates an individual’s right to privacy, mental health providers and other involved agencies can quickly communicate the overall “gist” of a person’s presenting problems by using a classification system...