Abnormal Psychology and Life A Dimensional Approach 3rd Edition

Abnormal Psychology and Life: A Dimensional Approach, Third Edition by Christopher A. Kearney and Timothy J. Trull — Published by Cengage Learning

This text provides students with a concise, contemporary, science-based view of psychopathology that emphasizes the individual first. Through consistent pedagogy featuring clinical cases and real first-person narratives, the text illuminates our understanding that abnormal behavior can be viewed along a continuum. By highlighting this widely accepted dimensional view — which places the behavior of an individual at the forefront of clinical definition, assessment, and treatment — the text's goal is to foster personal relevance for students and encourage them to become intelligent consumers of mental health information. The book also gives students a comprehensive understanding of the features and epidemiologies, risk factors and prevention, assessment and treatment, and long-term prognosis and associated stigma of mental disorders.

Special sections are devoted to college students and to those who may recognize certain symptoms in themselves or others, grounding the material in everyday experience. The text's unique consumer-based perspective — culminating in a final chapter titled "Consumer Guide to Abnormal Psychology" — ensures students leave the course equipped to apply what they have learned to real decisions about mental health.

Christopher A. Kearney is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Director of the UNLV Child School Refusal and Anxiety Disorders Clinic, specializing in anxiety and school refusal behavior in youth. Timothy J. Trull is the Byler Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri, known for his expertise in personality disorders, borderline personality disorder, and ambulatory assessment methods. Dr. Trull has received multiple teaching and mentoring awards, including Psi Chi Professor of the Year and the MU Graduate Faculty Mentor Award. Together, they have produced a text that is as grounded in science as it is in the lived human experience.