Child psychiatric epidemiology: stars and hypes

Excerpt

Epidemiological studies have been essential for the development of child psychiatry over the last half-century, especially in describing the frequency and course of child psychiatric problems, and in demonstrating strong cross-culturally consistent associations between social disadvantage or child neglect with child psychopathology. Traditionally, epidemiological studies also attempt to tackle questions of causality of child mental health problems. For obvious ethical and practical reasons, the experimental design to answer causal questions is often not feasible, and observational approaches, more than ever, have been crucial for a better understanding of the role of risk factors in the development of psychopathology. Perhaps the most outstanding contribution of recent epidemiological science has been to show the many reasons why observed associations do not reflect environmentally mediated causal effects. For example, the association between prenatal smoking and later child problem behaviours can largely be explained by inherited factors transmitted from mother to child [1]. …