Читать книгу Abnormal Psychology - William J. Ray - Страница 40

At one time in our history, health professionals made a sharp distinction between physical disorders and mental disorders—physical disorders involved the body, and mental disorders involved the mind. For example, addiction was at one time seen as a lack of will, with little to do with physiology. Today, we have come to see the close connection of the brain with what were previously considered mental processes. Mental disorders are brain disorders. Further, those physiological processes involved in physical disorders such as the immune system, the turning on and off of genes, and the chemical processes of the body are also equally involved in mental disorders.

In this book, I will use the terms psychopathology, mental disorders, or mental illness to refer to those disorders traditionally described in scientific and professional research and practice. Psychopathology is the word commonly used in the neurosciences and the one you would want to use when performing literature searches in research and clinical journals. Abnormal psychology as a research area has a long tradition in psychology, and I will refer to this tradition by that term.