Dimensions of Psychological Problems

Book excerpt: This book is a manifesto for a remarkable revolution in thinking about psychological problems that is rapidly reaching a tipping point. Many psychologists and psychiatrists are proposing a far less stigmatizing understanding of mental health problems. Psychological problems are not terrifying "illnesses" of the mind but are problematic ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that lie on dimensions from inconsequential to severe. Crucially, they are ordinary aspects of the human experience, both in the sense of being far more commonplace than previously believed and in arising through the same ordinary interplay of genetic and environmental influences as all behavior.