| Summary: | The major purpose of this handbook is to provide a comprehensive review of current clinical descriptions, research, and theories of psychopathology. Descrip tive psychopathology is a field that is the foundation of clinical practice and re search in clinical psychology, psychiatry, psychiatric social work, psychiatric nursing, and allied professions in mental health. Psychopathology is often per ceived as "a stepchild" of the more glamorous areas of diagnosis or assessment and therapy or behavioral change. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that any meaningful advancements in these areas will occur until there is a thorough understanding of the behavioral disorders. The purpose of the present project was to devise a handbook that covered both general and specific topics in psychopathology and that would be useful to re searchers, practitioners, and graduate or other advanced students in the mental health professions. In order to implement this plan, we selected very carefully colleagues whom we respect for their expertise in particular fields. These include both clinicians and researchers with outstanding national reputations, as well as more junior behavioral scientists and clinicians who, in our opinion, will achieve similar recognition in the future. The chapters in this book lead us to believe that we have chosen wisely. We would like to express our appreciation to these authors for their outstanding contributions and cooperation
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