KHACHATUR ABOVYAN ARMENIAN STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

A three-day conference entitled “Psychological Issues: Characteristics, Classification and Diagnosis Principles” is underway at Armenian State Pedagogical University.

A roundtable discussion was held on the first day during which psychologists from the UK, Russia, Ukraine, Israel and other countries spoke about the essence and importance of psychology, personality disorders and their types, classification of psychological disorders.

In their speeches, the guest speakers, mainly practicing psychologists and psychotherapists, tried to reveal how psychological disorders and mental illnesses are defined and diagnosed, their signs and symptoms are detected, etc.

Dmitry Leontiev (Professor at Lomonosov Moscow State University), Vladimir Mendelevich (Director of Mental Health Research Institute of Kazan), David Cooke (Professor at the University of Bergen in Norway), Vladimir Mazilov (Head of the Chair of General and Social Psychology of Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University) presented their approaches.

They emphasized the importance of the conference, considering ASPU’s experience as a brave step in finding possible solutions to the creation of a classification system for those issues.

“Classification of psychological problems is necessary, but hardly possible. What will it give? New tools to correctly diagnose the problem,” said Vladimir Mendelevich.

David Cooke says “classification can help identify the problem and create a research base. We should definitely reveal what kind of problem it is and move forward."

The speakers shared their thoughts and concerns with the conference participants. Many used interesting phrases and comparisons and agreed that they have the key but they don’t have the lock. The participants agreed that there are psychological problems in all spheres of life: they are very unique and individual.

How can we reveal a problem if we cannot find anything about it in any book? How can we figure out the problem and understand whether there is a problem or not? We learn the methods but we don’t know the answers to the above questions...

Summarizing the results of the discussion and conclusions Head of the ASPU Chair of Psychology Samvel Khudoyan said they will try to unite all efforts and opinions on the topic in order to find possible solutions.

Later on, the participants visited the Khor Virap monastery and got acquainted with the history of the 17th century architectural complex.