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Epidemiology and Clinical Psychiatry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Michael Shepherd
Michael Shepherd*
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AZ
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Extract

The Maudsley Bequest lectures have traditionally been intended for trainee psychiatrists. No previous lecture in the series has been concerned directly with epidemiology, and the trainee who seeks enlightenment in the British textbooks of psychiatry is likely to be disappointed or misled, for the standard view of the subject is epitomized in the statement which appears in their weightiest representative: ‘In this field the epidemiological approach concerns itself with investigation of the frequency with which definable forms of psychiatric disorder occur in carefully delineated populations' (Slater and Roth, 1969). While this aspect of the discipline is central to the interests of workers in the field of public health and administration, the notion of epidemiology as primarily an exercise in head-counting is unlikely to suggest the relevance of the discipline to clinical activities, especially if these are conceived as being focused primarily on the individual patient. In this lecture I propose to try and correct this impression and indicate the provenance and scope of epidemiology as a major branch of scientific inquiry which is indispensable to clinical psychiatry.

Type
Lecture
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 133 , Issue 4 , October 1978 , pp. 289 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1978 

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References

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Further Reading

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Milbank Memorial Fund (1950) Epidemiology of Mental Disorder. New York.Google Scholar
Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust (1962) The Burden on the Community: the Epidemiology of Mental Illness. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
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