Vulnerability to Psychopathology

This text proposes that psychopathology is best understood as the interaction between three key factors - biology/genetics, personality, and stressful events. These, in combination with social and familial factors, create vulnerability in the individual. Using this framework, the author synthesizes research available on each of the major disorders including anxiety, mood, antisocial personality, substance abuse, pathological gambling, and schizophrenic disorders. The author's intent is to provide teachers, students, researchers, and theorists with an up-to-date, single source of information on the major psychological disorders. The volume covers their history, diagnosis, prevalence, prognosis, course, outcome, comorbidity, demographic characteristics, genetics, biochemistry and neurophysiology. An important finding is that, while anxiety, depression, and antisocial personality represent extremes of normal personality dimensions, schizotype personality and schizophrenic disorder are a taxon, not continuous with normal dimensions of personality.