Psychopathology

Psychopathology is the scientific study of mental disorders, including efforts to understand their genetic, biological, psychological, and social causes; effective classification schemes (nosology); course across all stages of development; manifestations; and treatment. The term may also refer to the manifestation of behaviors that indicate the presence of a mental disorder.

The word psychopathology has a Greek origin: 'psyche' means "soul", 'pathos' is defined as "suffering", and 'logos' is "the study of". Wholly, psychopathology is defined as the origin of mental disorders, how they develop, and the symptoms they might produce in a person.

Patients with mental disorders are normally treated by psychiatrists, or psychologists, who both specialize in mental health and diagnose and treat patients through medication or psychotherapy. These professionals systematically diagnose individuals with mental disorders using specific diagnostic criteria and symptomatology found within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Early explanations for mental illnesses were influenced by religious belief and superstition. Psychological conditions that are now classified as mental disorders were initially attributed to possessions by evil spirits, demons, and the devil. This idea was widely accepted up until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Individuals who suffered from these so-called "possessions" were tortured as treatment. Doctors used this technique in hoping to bring their patients back to sanity. Those who failed to return to sanity after torture were executed.

The Greek physician Hippocrates was one of the first to reject the idea that mental disorders were caused by possession of demons or the devil. He firmly believed the symptoms of mental disorders were due to diseases originating in the brain. Hippocrates suspected that these states of insanity were due to imbalances of fluids in the body. He identified these fluids to be four in particular: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm.

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