Based on powerful epidemiological data such as numbers afflicted, mortality rates from suicide, personal and familial consequences, and skyrocketing fiscal costs, major depressive disorder (MDD) has the sad and ignominious distinction of being a leader among disabling disorders worldwide.

During the past several decades, interest in children’s psychological disorders has grown steadily within the research community, resulting in a burgeoning knowledge base. The majority of the attention and funding, not surprisingly, has focused on the more prevalent and well-known conditions.

This volume covers a wide range of conceptual, epistemological and methodological issues in the philosophy of science raised by reflection upon medical science and practice. Several chapters examine such general meta-scientific concepts as discovery, reduction, theories and models, causal inference and scientific realism as they apply to medicine or medical science in particular.

Editors-in-chief Michel Hersen and Alan Gross have gathered leading international scholars and practitioners in two volumes to present the latest information and innovations in clinical psychology, including in the areas of ethics, legal issues, professional roles, cross cultural psychology, geropsychology, and more.
All mental health professionals, students, and researchers will find these volumes to be an important resource for timely and proven information for effective clinical practice

Although forensic medicine has been in existence for centuries in one guise or another, it is only with the recent growth in international research that it has begun to be acknowledged as a specific discipline in its own right.