Theories of Psychopathology: Introduction to a Special Section

• Published in: Journal of psychopathology and clinical science 2023-04, Vol.132 (3), p.223-227
• Main Authors: Kent, Jerillyn S., Markon, Kristian, MacDonald, Angus W.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biopsychosocial Approach; Biopsychosocial aspects; Causal Analysis; Causality; Human; Humans; Mental Disorders; Models, Biopsychosocial; Models, Theoretical; Personality Inventory; Pessimism; Prevention programs; Psychological Theories; Psychopathology; Understanding
• ISSN: 2769-7541; 2769-755X
• DOI: 10.1037/abn0000824

This special section on theories of psychopathology provides an opportunity to collect the emergent, cross-cutting scholarship that is challenging traditional approaches to understanding mental illness. Here, we appraise the state of theory in the field and emphasize the pitfalls of working in the context of overly flexible, unchallenged, and essentially unchallengeable theoretic models, such as the biopsychosocial model, which we argue has become the de facto theoretic model for our field. We further posit that theoretic shortcomings are contributing to the often-referenced pessimism regarding our progress in understanding and treating mental illness, and introduce the charge of the authors of the papers in this section to articulate novel, falsifiable theories of psychopathology. We briefly touch on the intertwined issue of how to define psychopathology and discuss a key issue raised by the array of papers comprising the section, namely how to conceptualize the spatiotemporal boundaries of complex causal systems. We then use this schematic for understanding how these theories relate to each other and to the vanilla biopsychosocial model they are vying to replace. Ultimately, it is our belief and hope that progress in theoretic thinking will catalyze faster progress in research and improvements to and novel developments in clinical prevention and intervention efforts. General Scientific Summary This paper introduces a special section of the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science on "Theories of Psychopathology." In this piece, we discuss the state and importance of theory in the field, and outline the goal of and introduce the papers included in the special section.