Psychopathology

Psychopathology is the scientific study of mental disorders, including efforts to understand their genetic, biological, psychological, and social causes; develop classification schemes (nosology) which can improve treatment planning and treatment outcomes; understand the course of psychiatric illnesses across all stages of development; more fully understand the manifestations of mental disorders; and investigate potentially effective treatments. Psychopathology is the scientific study of mental disorders, including efforts to understand their genetic, biological, psychological, and social causes; develop classification schemes (nosology) which can improve treatment planning and treatment outcomes; understand the course of psychiatric illnesses across all stages of development; more fully understand the manifestations of mental disorders; and investigate potentially effective treatments. At least conceptually, psychopathology is a subset of pathology, which is the '... scientific study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences.' Psychopathology is distinct from psychiatry by virtue of being a theoretical field of scientific research rather than a specialty of medical practice. Early explanations for mental illnesses were influenced by religious belief and superstition. Psychological conditions that are now classified as mental disorders were initially attributed to possessions by evil spirits, demons, and the devil. This idea was widely accepted up until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Individuals who suffered from these so-called 'possessions' were tortured as treatment. Doctors used this technique in hoping to bring their patients back to sanity. Those who failed to return to sanity after torture were executed. The Greek physician Hippocrates was one of the first to reject the idea that mental disorders were caused by possession of demons or the devil. He firmly believed the symptoms of mental disorders were due to diseases originating in the brain. Hippocrates suspected that these states of insanity were due to imbalances of fluids in the body. He identified these fluids to be four in particular: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Furthermore, not far from Hippocrates, the philosopher Plato would come to argue the mind, body, and spirit worked as a unit. Any imbalance brought to these compositions of the individual could bring distress or lack of harmony within the individual. This philosophical idea would remain in perspective until the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century's Romantic Movement, the idea that healthy parent-child relationships provided sanity became a prominent idea. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau introduced the notion that trauma in childhood could have negative implications later in adulthood. In the nineteenth century, greatly influenced by Rousseau's ideas and philosophy, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud would bring about psychotherapy and become the father of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Talking therapy would originate from his ideas on the individual's experiences and the natural human efforts to make sense of the world and life. The scientific discipline of psychopathology was founded by Karl Jaspers in 1913. It was referred to as 'static understanding' and its purpose was to graphically recreate the 'mental phenomenon' experienced by the client. The study of psychopathology is interdisciplinary, with contributions coming from clinical, social, and developmental psychology, as well as neuropsychology and other psychology subdisciplines; psychiatry; neuroscience generally; criminology; social work; sociology; epidemiology; statistics; and more. Practitioners in clinical and academic fields are referred to as psychopathologists.