'ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE: A DIMENSIONAL APPROACH provides students with a concise, contemporary, science-based view of psychopathology that emphasizes the individual first. Through consistent pedagogy featuring clinical cases and real first-person narratives, the text illuminates our understanding that abnormal behavior can be viewed along a continuum. By highlighting this widely accepted dimensional view?which places the behavior of an individual at the forefront of clinical definition, assessment, and treatment?the text's goal is to foster personal relevance for students and encourage them to become intelligent consumers of mental health information. The book also gives students a comprehensive understanding of the features and epidemiologies, risk factors and prevention, assessment and treatment, and long term prognosis and associated stigma of mental disorders.
' ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE: A DIMENSIONAL APPROACH covers the main disorders' features, available assessment tools, and treatments. In addition, it helps students see clients of mental health services as real people who have varying risk factors, and who fall in different places on a behavioral continuum for each disorder. There are two unique chapters in the text: one on risk factors and prevention (Chapter 3), and one that discusses both careers for students in the mental health profession and how to become a client of those services (Chapter 15, "Consumer Guide to Abnormal Psychology"). Each disorder chapter contains at least one continuum that shows the varying degrees of a disorder and how it can be illustrated through a common situation. For example, the Anxiety Disorder continuum shows the levels of worry, anxiety, and fearfrom normal to severeexperienced by a person interviewing for a new job Personal Narratives give first-hand accounts of an individual living with a psychological disorder, the family or friends affected by those living with a disorder, or the professionals who try to help. The text aims to put a human face on the disorders, showing students that real people deal with psychological disorders, and that a disorder can best be treated by assessing each individual in a holistic fashion. Additional features such as Case Studies with corresponding What Do You Think? questions, DSM-IV-TR tables, Interim Summaries, and Review Questions all help students remember, understand, and apply the material.
'Preface. 1. Abnormal Psychology and Life: An Overview. 2. Perspectives on Abnormal Psychology. 3. Risk and Prevention of Mental Disorders. 4. Diagnosis, Assessment, and Study of Mental Disorders. 5. Anxiety Disorders. 6. Somatoform and Dissociative Disorders. 7. Mood Disorders and Suicide. 8. Eating Disorders. 9. Substance Related Disorders. 10. Personality Disorders. 11. Sexual Dysfunctions and Disorders and Gender Identity Disorder. 12. Schizophrenia and other Psychotic Disorders. 13. Developmental and Disruptive Behavior Disorders. 14. Cognitive Disorders. 15. Consumer Guide to Abnormal Psychology. Appendix: Stress Related Problems. Glossary. References. Name Index. Subject Index.
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