Читать книгу Developmental Psychopathology - Группа авторов - Страница 31

The developmental psychopathology approach helps us to understand why some individuals develop mental disorders and other individuals follow a different path. Developmental psychopathology is the study of the origins and course of individual patterns of behavior (Sroufe & Rutter, 1984). This approach to studying mental disorders in childhood and adolescence stresses the importance of developmental processes or how one changes and adapts throughout childhood. It takes into account individual factors about the child (temperament, biological risk) and their context (family, neighborhood, community) as influences on child development. In addition to understanding risk for psychopathology, the developmental psychopathology approach also seeks to understand resiliency. This approach links different fields or disciplines of science together to study normal development and psychopathology (mental disorders).

In summary, an overarching objective of the developmental psychopathology framework is to better understand why some individuals develop psychopathology whereas others do not. This can be broken down into several more questions:

1 How does psychopathology look the same or different across different phases of child development?

2 Are there underlying traits or biological factors that help explain individual risk?

3 What role does the environment (parents, neighborhood, culture) play in increasing or decreasing risk for an individual?

4 How can we understand the interplay of timing (i.e., stage of development), nature (i.e., genetic susceptibility), and nurture (i.e., environmental influence) to explain risk and resiliency?

5 Can answers to the above questions help prevent or ameliorate psychopathology at different phases of life?