Explaining Abnormal Psychology

People have tried to explain and control abnormal behavior for thousands of years. Historically, there have been three main approaches to abnormal behavior: the supernatural, biological, and psychological traditions. Abnormal psychology revolves around two major paradigms for explaining mental disorders, the psychological paradigm and the biological paradigm. The psychological paradigm focuses more on the humanistic, cognitive and behavioral causes and effects of psychopathology. The biological paradigm includes the theories that focus more on physical factors, such as genetics and neurochemistry.

In the biological tradition, psychological disorders are attributed to biological causes and in the psychological tradition, disorders are attributed to faulty psychological development and to social context. The medical or biological perspective holds the belief that most or all abnormal behavior can be attributed to a medical factor; assuming all psychological disorders are diseases.

The Greek physician Hippocrates, who is considered to be the father of Western medicine, played a major role in the biological tradition. Hippocrates and his associates wrote the Hippocratic Corpus between 450 and 350 BC, in which they suggested that abnormal behaviors can be treated like any other disease. Hippocrates viewed the brain as the seat of consciousness, emotion, intelligence, and wisdom and believed that disorders involving these functions would logically be located in the brain.

These ideas of Hippocrates and his associates were later adopted by Galen, the Roman physician. Galen extended these ideas and developed a strong and influential school of thought within the biological tradition that extended well into the 18^th century.

Medical: Kendra Cherry states: "The medical approach to abnormal psychology focuses on the biological causes on mental illness. This perspective emphasizes understanding the underlying cause of disorders, which might include genetic inheritance, related physical disorders, infections and chemical imbalances. Medical treatments are often pharmacological in nature, although medication is often used in conjunction with some other type of psychotherapy."

Journal of Clinical Psychology and Cognitive Science is an interdisciplinary open access, peer reviewed publication that focuses on the research that probes clinical, medical, and social, aspects of the psychological disorders with a special emphasis on the cognitive sciences.

Contributors are welcome to publish high quality clinical, and laboratory research as case series, reviews, guidelines, techniques, and practices.  Manuscripts that mitigate social stigma, and offers emotional support to the patients undergoing psychological stress and strain are solicited. The journal also solicits manuscripts that discuss technical and medical advancements in Computational neuroscience, Neuropathology, Telemedicine, Behavioral sciences, Educational, health and medical psychology, and psychiatry to address the issues and challenges in this field.

Author(s) may submit their manuscripts through the journal's online submission at: https://www.pulsus.com/submissions/clinical-psychology-cognitive-science.html

Media Contact
Rose Jackson
Managing Editor
Journal of Clinical Psychology and Cognitive Science
E-Mail: clinicalpsycology@emedicalscience.com