The Origins of Common Mental Disorders describes the nature, characteristics and causes of common emotional and behavioral disorders across the lifespan, providing a clear and concise account or recent advances in our knowledge of the origins and history of anxious, depressive and behavioral disorders.

Combining a lifespan approach with developments in neurobiology, this book describes the epidemiology of emotional and behavioral disorders in child hood, adolescence and adult life. David Goldberg and Ian Goodyer demonstrate how both genes and environments exert different but key effects on the development of these disorders and suggest a developmental model as the most appropriate for determining vulnerabilities for psychopathology. Divided into four sections, the book covers:

DT The nature and distribution of common mental disorders

DT The biological basis of common disorders

DT The human life cycle relevant to common disorders

DT The developmental model

This highly readable account of the origins of emotional and behavioral disorders will be of interest to psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and counselors.