Dr. Telly Kamelia 
If you only need the buying answer: rental is the cheapest short-term route in this snapshot, with MindTap close behind. The current paperback is only modestly above those two options and still below the sampled marketplace offer, which means print is not overpriced. This is a choice between temporary access and longer-term reuse.
Current price comparison
| Format | Source | Price | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paperback | Merybook | $59.98 | Check price |
| Quarter rental | eCampus | $46.78 | Check price |
| MindTap / eTextbook (180 days) | eCampus | $54.99 | Check price |
| Marketplace | eCampus | $64.52 | Check price |
What this book actually teaches
Psychopathology: A Competency-Based Assessment for Social Workers is not simply a DSM summary. It is a clinically oriented social-work text about diagnosis, assessment, person-in-environment thinking, and how psychopathology is interpreted within actual practice contexts. The value of the book lies in helping readers connect categories to assessment judgment and social-work intervention rather than memorizing labels in isolation.
That makes it the kind of book some students revisit later in clinical training. Others only need it for one semester and then move on. The right format depends on which of those two readers you are.
When print is still worth buying
The honest short-term value route is rental, especially if the course does not require you to keep the book. MindTap is also close enough to matter if the platform is tied to grading. But the current paperback is not much more expensive, so ownership becomes reasonable when you expect to revisit psychopathology and assessment in later clinical or licensure-oriented work.
I would lean toward rental or MindTap for a strictly short-term course need. I would lean toward print for social-work students who expect to return to assessment frameworks and psychopathology later in their training.
