"We realize that as you navigate these challenging and transformational times, many of you will be touched by mental health issues, either directly through your own emotional struggles or indirectly through friends or family. Recent events have both created and exacerbated social and economic challenges for many people, with resultant effects on emotional functioning and overall mental health. Given these realities, knowledge about symptoms, causes, and treatments associated with mental disorders and about methods for maintaining optimal mental health during challenging times is a highly relevant topic. It is our hope that this textbook will be personally meaningful to all who read it. For this reason, we look at the subject matter broadly and incorporate a variety of multicultural and contemporary examples to enhance the relevancy of our discussions. In writing and revising this text, we have made great effort to update the content in an effort to engage students in the exciting process of understanding psychopathology and the techniques that mental health professionals employ when assessing and treating mental disorders. Four major objectives have guided our pursuit of this goal: to provide students with scholarship of the highest quality; to offer balanced coverage of abnormal psychology as both a scientific and a clinical endeavor, giving students the opportunity to explore topics thoroughly and responsibly; to expand awareness and empathy by focusing on the human face of mental illness, including an emphasis on both resilience and recovery; and to write a text that is inviting and stimulating to a wide range of students and that highlights meaningful topics that intersect with contemporary social issues. The enhanced 12th edition of 'Understanding Abnormal Behavior', now titled 'Understanding Psychological Disorders', has been revised to incorporate the text revision of the American Psychiatric Associations' 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disor