PREFACE This audiobook course is designed for the college student who wants to get a thorough understanding of abnormal psychology. The prevalence of mental illness in all of the populations of the world is high, with many people being underdiagnosed and undertreated. In this course, we will talk about the history and paradigms of abnormal psychology so you can see how mental illness has been approached in the past and how it is approached today. Methods of diagnosing and treating mental disorders will also be covered as part of the course. Finally, there will be a thorough description of the various mental illnesses in humans of all ages so you will be able to recognize each of them and understand what is known about why they occur. In chapter one of the course, we will start by looking at how mental illness has been viewed throughout history. You will see how different mental illness has been seen from ancient times until now. We will emphasize some of the ideas regarding mental illness and is treatment that evolved in the Twentieth Century. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has come out of Twentieth Century thoughts on mental illness. There are different paradigms of psychology and abnormal psychology discussed in this chapter, including how approaches to mental illness must take the patient’s culture into account in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Chapter two talks about the different ways that diagnostic testing can be used to identify mental illness. The basic psychological examination is used in almost all diagnoses of mental disorders but as you will see, there are multiple other tests that can be done, including cognitive testing, personality testing, and questionnaires used to screen for anxiety, depression, and dissociative disorders. We will also talk about neuropsychometric tests used in the diagnosis of neurological and psychological disorders, behavioral testing, and some of the newer imaging tests that will help in research circles to identify brain changes linked to mental illness. The focus of chapter three in the course is mood disorders, of which there are several types. Mood disorders involve a disturbance in the brain that leads to episodes of low
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