Policy, defined broadly to include public policy as well as institutional or
organizational policy, is useful for sustaining change in human development and its
contexts and systems. The role for developmental psychopathology research in policy
analysis and policy making is discussed. To assure that developmental
psychopathology research is useful for policy (or practice) requires rigorous
strategic thinking, commonly called “systems thinking”. Systems
thinking is described and its usefulness tested with a specific example of human
development change - that of delinquency career crime prevention. Policy
implications are then drawn from the example and generalized to broader human
developmental change.
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