Psychopathology Health Dictionary

The study of abnormal mental processes. There are 2 main approaches: the descriptive, which aims to record symptoms that make up a diagnosis of mental illness; and the psychoanalytic, which is concerned with the unconscious feelings and motives of the individual.

n. 1. the study of mental disorders, with the aim of explaining and describing aberrant behaviour. Compare psychiatry. 2. the symptoms, collectively, of a mental disorder.

—psychopathological adj.