TY  - CHAP
M1  - Book, Section
TI  - Chapter 2. Psychiatric Epidemiology
A1  - Blazer, Dan G.
A2  - Ebert, Michael H.
A2  - Loosen, Peter T.
A2  - Nurcombe, Barry
A2  - Leckman, James F.
PY  - 2008
T2  - CURRENT Diagnosis & Treatment: Psychiatry, 2e
AB  - The  late  George  Engel  promulgated  a  theoretical  model,  based  on  general  systems  theory,  of  the  etiology  of  mental  disease  that  remains  central  to  epidemiologic  investigations  into  the  twenty-first  century.  Research  demonstrates  that  unitary  explanations  are  not  adequate  to  explain  disease  etiology  or  thus  inform  appropriate  prevention  and  treatment  strategies.  Engel  suggested  an  interrelatedness  among  biological,  psychological,  and  social  factors.  Biological  factors  include  hereditary,  anatomic,  and  molecular  factors  and  those  factors  related  to  gender,  age,  and  ethnicity.  Psychological  factors  include  temperament,  personality,  motivation,  emotion,  attention,  and  cognition.  According  to  Engel's  theory,  social  factors  included  family,  society,  culture,  and  environment;  other  authors  would  include  religious  and  spiritual  as  well  as  economic  factors  in  this  group.  Engel  also  believed  that  the  physician's  contribution,  through  a  psychosocial  presence,  to  this  “collaborative  pathway  to  health”  was  often  inseparable  from  that  brought  by  the  patient.  From  this  perspective,  psychiatric  epidemiologists  explore  the  frequency,  distribution,  outcome,  and  causation  of  psychiatric  disorders.  Identifying  a  case  becomes  the  first  task  of  the  epidemiologist.  An  essential  component  of  all  these  uses  is  the  determination  of  valid  denominators  to  compare  the  characteristics  of  populations  with  and  without  disease.  For  example,  to  determine  the  prevalence  of  a  case  (i.e.,  the  frequency  of  the  case  in  a  given  population  at  a  given  point  in  time)  one  must  know  the  number  of  persons  both  with  and  without  the  disorder  in  the  population.  To  determine  the  incidence  of  a  case  (the  number  of  new  cases  that  emerge  in  the  population  over  a  given  interval  (usually  1  year),  one  must  know  the  number  of  people  in  the  population  at  the  beginning  of  an  interval  who  do  not  experience  the  disorder.  A  list  of  key  terms  in  epidemiology  can  be  found  in  Table  2–1.  
SN  - 
PB  - The McGraw-Hill Companies
CY  - New York, NY
Y2  - 2024/04/19
UR  - accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=3280086
ER  -