Acknowledgements

This project was supported by an Open Textbook Creation/Adaptation Fund grant from the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching & Learning at the University of Saskatchewan – thank you for your support of this project.

This project would not have been possible without the help of Julie Maier, Instructional Designer (Distance Education Unit) and Jessica Campoli, Graduate Assistant (Department of Psychology!). Julie, I am fortunate to have had your organizational skills, knowledge and experience for this project – as well as your patience! Jessica, thank you for your diligent literature reviews and work updating this content to reflect Canadians’ experiences of psychopathology. Thank you as well for being a much-needed cheerleader in the hustle.

Thank you to my graduate students Cailey Strauss, Kelsi Toews, Whitney Willcott-Benoit, and Kendall Deleurme for your assistance writing sections of this book. I enjoyed working on this project as a team. Moreover, I am always grateful for the purpose, humour, curiosity, and comraderie you all bring to my professional life. Working with you is the best part of my job!

Thank you Rob Butz for another great cover design, your support, encouragement, and domestic skills, especially in “serious crunch time” when this book took over our lives – incidentally, at the same time COVID-19 took over our lives (i.e., at the worst possible time ever to have a huge deadline). Thank you to my parents for being willing to wear masks and be added to our “bubble,” which made it even more possible to double down on crunch time.

Thank you as well to Heather Ross, who fanned the flames of my interest in making psychology more accessible and affordable into two open text projects, with funding! When I began this process I simply wanted to stop students from having to drop my class because they couldn’t afford the textbook – but you pulled me into your vision and now we have two open psychology books to share more widely.

Thank you to the authors whose work is used in this book. Without your work and willingness to share it openly, this book could not have happened.

-Jorden A. Cummings (June 15, 2020)