Development and Psychopathology

Abstract

Developmental psychopathology is the “study of the origins and course of individual patterns of behavioral maladaptation” (Sroufe & Rutter, 1984, p. 14). Each part of this definition is significant and has multiple implications. First, developmental psychopathology stresses the factors leading to development, onset, and course of maladaptive behavior. Second, it typically focuses on individual rather than group differences. Third, behavioral maladaptation, rather than diagnosis or classification, is emphasized. As the word maladaptation implies, psychopathology is set within the social and developmental context of the individual, rather than within the individual. In each of these ways, the developmental psychopathology approach differs from the typical approach taken to psychopathology by clinicians and researchers, exemplified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The authors of the DSM-IV have chosen a system that de-emphasizes origins or causes of disorders and emphasizes symptom clusters that produce a mental disorder that is “considered a manifestation of a behavioral, psychological, or biological dysfunction in [italics added] the individual” (pp. xxi-xxii).

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