Somatogenic perspective: The view that abnormal psychological functioning has physical causes.

State hospitals: Public mental institutions in the United States, run by the individual states.

Asylum: A type of institution that first became popular in the sixteenth century to provide care for persons with mental disorders. Most became virtual prisons.

Prevention: A key feature of community mental health programs that seek to prevent or minimize psychological disorders.

Norms: A society’s stated and unstated rules for proper conduct.

Humors: According to the Greeks and Romans, bodily chemicals that influence mental and physical functioning.

Multicultural psychology: The field of psychology that examines the impact of culture, race, ethnicity, gender, and similar factors on our behaviors and thoughts and focuses on how such factors may influence the origin, nature, and treatment of abnormal behavior.

Moral treatment: A nineteenth-century approach to treating people with mental dysfunction that emphasized moral guidance and humane and respectful treatment.

Cybertherapy: The use of computer technology, such as Skype or avatars, to provide therapy.

Treatment: A systematic procedure designed to help change abnormal behavior into more normal behavior. Also called therapy.

Private psychotherapy: An arrangement in which a person directly pays a therapist for counseling services.

Positive psychology: The study and enhancement of positive feelings, traits, and abilities.

Managed care program: A system of health care coverage in which the insurance company largely controls the nature, scope, and cost of medical or psychological services.

Trephination: An ancient operation in which a stone instrument was used to cut away a circular section of the skull, perhaps to treat abnormal behavior.

Psychogenic perspective: The view that the chief causes of abnormal functioning are psychological.

Psychoanalysis: Either the theory or the treatment of abnormal mental functioning that emphasizes unconscious psychological forces as the cause of psychopathology.

Deinstitutionalization: The discharge, begun during the 1960s, of large numbers of patients from long-term institutional care so that they might be treated in community programs.

Culture: A people’s common history, values, institutions, habits, skills, technology, and arts.

Abnormal psychology: The scientific study of abnormal behavior undertaken to describe, predict, explain, and change abnormal patterns of functioning.

Psychotropic medications: Drugs that mainly affect the brain and reduce many symptoms of mental dysfunctioning.

Control group: In an experiment, a group of participants who are not exposed to the independent variable.

Epidemiological study: A study that measures the incidence and prevalence of a disorder in a given population.

Correlation: The degree to which events or characteristics vary along with each other.

Institutional Review Board (IRB): An ethics committee formed in a research facility that is empowered to protect the rights and safety of human research participants. It reviews and may require changes in each proposed study at the facility before approving or disapproving the study.

Experiment: A research procedure in which a variable is manipulated and the effect of the manipulation is observed.

Blind design: An experiment in which participants do not know whether they are in the experimental or the control condition.

Longitudinal study: A study that observes the same participants on many occasions over a long period of time.

Scientific method: The process of systematically gathering and evaluating information through careful observations to gain an understanding of a phenomenon.

Quasi-experiment: An experiment in which investigators make use of control and experimental groups that already exist in the world at large. Also called a mixed design.

Single-subject experimental design: A research method in which a single participant is observed and measured both before and after the manipulation of an independent variable.

Hypothesis: A hunch or prediction that certain variables are related in certain ways.

Experimental group: In an experiment, the participants who are exposed to the independent variable under investigation.

Analogue experiment: A research method in which the experimenter produces abnormal-like behavior in laboratory participants and then conducts experiments on the participants.

Dependent variable: The variable in an experiment that is expected to change as the independent variable is manipulated.

Confound: In an experiment, a variable other than the independent variable that is also acting on the dependent variable.

Natural experiment: An experiment in which nature, rather than an experimenter, manipulates an independent variable.

Correlational method: A research procedure used to determine how much events or characteristics vary along with each other.

Independent variable: The variable in an experiment that is manipulated to determine whether it has an effect on another variable.

Random assignment: A selection procedure that ensures that participants are randomly placed either in the control group or in the experimental group.

Case study: A detailed account of a person’s life and psychological problems.