Epidemiology and Clinical Psychiatry

Abstract

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.