Disorders of Childhood

This text is written with the whole child in mind and discusses disorders in connection with the different stages of development, providing both a meaningful framework to promote students' learning and a practical, true-to-life approach for organizing the course. Four themes recur throughout the text, each informed by the principles and practices of developmental psychopathology, an interdisciplinary approach that asserts that maladaptive patterns of emotion, cognition, and behavior occur in the context of normal development. The authors emphasize multi-factor explanations of disorders as well as developmental frameworks and developmental pathways - presenting disorders and sets of disorders in the order in which they typically appear in a child's life. They also focus on the child-in-context (calling attention to the multiple settings in which the child is embedded) and emphasize the importance of taking a broad view that considers the whole child and his or her patterns of interest, abilities, and strengths, rather than a narrow view of a disorder or developmental delay. As a result of this holistic approach, which reflects the most up-to-date understanding of child and adolescent psychopathology, students learn to think about disorders in the same way that caring adults think about disorders they encounter every day - in terms of an individual child who is coping with distress and dysfunction. * This text explicitly highlights the interaction between normal development and psychopathology, employing a broad approach that focuses on the whole child rather than on narrow individual disorders and extensive use of case stories to bring the concepts to life. * A section at the beginning of each chapter summarizes the developmental tasks and challenges experienced by typically developing children that are especially relevant given the disorders discussed in the chapter. * Chapters are sequenced to reflect the normal course of development. This sequencing allows students to consider specific disorders and sets of disorders that occur in a particular developmental period in proximity and relation to one another. It also allows for an ongoing focus on the constructs of risk and resiliency, and provides a basis for coherent discussions of early-occurring disorders as risk factors for later-occurring disorders. * Multi-factor explanations of disorders (encompassing biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors) are examined in detailed analyses of etiologies, assessments, diagnoses, developmental pathways, and interventions. * Themed feature boxes - The Child in Context, Clinical Perspectives, Risk and Resilience, and Emerging Science - support the book''s overall approach and highlight important topics of interest to students.