Child & Adolescent Psychopathology

Catalog description

While courses in abnormal psychology are commonplace among undergraduate curricula, courses focusing on psychopathology and understanding the roots and progression of mental illness are relatively rare. More novel still is the opportunity to receive instruction in psychopathology from practicing psychiatrists and psychologists at an internationally renowned clinical and research center. Through lecture presentations and discussions, this course focuses on disease etiology, epidemiology, phenomenology, nosology, and diagnosis, where mental illness almost always begins – in childhood. The course engages students in a critical review of the most common child and adolescent mental illnesses, in addition to the disorders that typically begin in early adulthood, and challenges social and cultural assumptions of what constitutes ”normal” vs. “pathological” behavior, cognition, and emotion. Students also complete two practicums by observing the evaluation of two children or adolescents and their families at the NYU Child Study Center.