WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE SOUND TO YOU as if they have a mental disorder? Which, in other words, show signs of mental illness?

You’ll learn more about these three people in the chapter ahead, which introduces the study of psychological disorders. As you’ll see, psychologists studying disorders face numerous challenges. One is to develop effective treatments for people who experience the disorders. Another is to figure out exactly who has a mental disorder in the first place.

WHAT DO PSYCHOLOGISTS do for a living? As you saw in Chapter 1, we’re “all over the map.” Some study the brain’s neural networks. Others study people’s social networks. Some try to understand genes. Others try to comprehend cultures. Some work with adult humans and others with newborn animals. It may seem that no central goal motivates the majority of psychologists.

That perception, however, is not accurate. Consider these numbers from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of the approximately 190,000 people in the United States employed as psychologists, more than 60% work in clinical or counseling psychology—fields where the primary goal is to reduce psychological distress. Tens of thousands more work as school psychologists, where job duties include helping students overcome behavioral and emotional problems.

Thus, there is a central goal that motivates the work of most psychologists: reducing psychological distress, thereby improving mental health. Psychologists try to benefit mental health by treating psychological disorders, which are prolonged experiences of psychological distress or poor psychological functioning that interfere with a person’s everyday life. Psychological disorders are often called mental disorders; we’ll use the terms interchangeably. They also have been called mental illnesses (a controversial term, as we discuss later). The study of psychological disorders is called psychopathology. Because the disordered psychological experiences are atypical or “abnormal,” the branch of psychology that studies and treats them is often called abnormal psychology. A variety of professionals treat psychological disorders, including clinical psychologists, counseling psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers (see Table 15.1 for definitions).

We address psychological disorders in this chapter and the next. To preview the material, we note some features of our coverage. A key feature is that coverage of disorders and their treatment is integrated. For any given disorder, we present its main features (characteristic experiences of individuals with the disorder and diagnostic categories for classifying those experiences) and then review therapies designed to treat that disorder. You thus will see how contemporary psychologists devise therapies designed to alleviate specific types of psychological distress (Nathan & Gorman, 2007).

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This integration of disorders and their treatment occurs consistently throughout Chapters 15 and 16. Here, in Chapter 15, we focus our attention on two classes of psychological disorder that are particularly prevalent: those involving (1) anxiety and (2) depression. In Chapter 16, we explore the nature of, and treatment for, disorders that are somewhat less common yet that affect the brain, the mind, and people’s lives in a particularly profound and enduring manner: schizophrenia, personality disorders, and dissociative disorders.

Before learning about individual disorders and their treatment, however, you need to know (1) what “counts” as a disorder (i.e., psychologists’ methods for determining whether people have a psychological disorder) and (2) the overall options available for treating disorders (i.e., the available strategies for meeting the challenge of reducing psychological distress). We therefore begin with an overview of psychological disorders and therapies.