Abnormal psychology, frequently called psychopathology, is the study of people suffering from mental, emotional and often physical pain. Although people with psychopathological problems can have unusual experiences, most of the time these experiences are same in nature to other people's experiences but taken to an extreme degree (e.g. sadness turning into depression).

Defining Abnormality

Some behaviours that seem abnormal

An assessment is the process of collecting symptoms and seeing what causes them. A diagnosis is a label for a number of symptoms that often occur together.

There are modern methods for diagnosing. Assessment techniques must be valid and reliable. In addition, they must be standardized.

Validity

To say that a test is

In this chapter, the somatic symptom disturbances and the dissociative disorders will be discussed. In somatic symptom disorders , people have physical complaints, without an organic cause. Often the pain comes through painful emotions, thoughts or memories. In dissociative disorders , people develop several independent personalities, as a result of which they suffer from memory loss. This is

A person suffers from psychosis if he has hallucinations and delusions and can not say with certainty whether his observations are real or not. A form of psychosis that often occurs is schizophrenia. People can sometimes think very clearly and function well, but also have moments when they can no longer take care of themselves.

Schizophrenia occurs

 Most individuals meet the criteria for two or more eating disorders at different times. Many people do not meet the criteria for an eating disorder, but do show behaviours and concerns that fit in an eating disorder. They are diagnosed with other specified feeding or eating disorder.

Anorexia nervosa

People with