Developmental psychopathology: A primer for clinical pediatrics

Core Tip

Core tip: Developmental psychopathology is an expansive approach to understanding the processes and pathways to normal and abnormal development. The minireview articulated the four central principles upon which approach is based. Perhaps the most important tip which these principles point to is an expansion on the notion of developmental cascades as a way of advancing the sophistication and comprehensiveness of the understanding of developmental pathways. Namely the notion of developmental cascades proposes that early appearing problems can have effects that spread across multiple levels of functioning in a multiplicity of ways over time and thus provides a promising direction for the constructing developmental models for pathways of cascading effects.