M4. Lesson 2: Classifying Mental Disorders Flashcards
What is epidemiology?
Epidemiology is the scientific study of the frequency and causes of diseases and other health-related states in specific populations such as a school, neighborhood, a city, country, and the world.
What is psychiatric or mental health epidemiology?
Psychiatric or mental health epidemiology refers to the occurrence of mental disorders in a population.
What is done in mental health facilities?
In mental health facilities, we say that a patient presents with a specific problem, or the presenting problem, and we give a clinical description of it, which includes information about the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that constitute that mental disorder. We also seek to gain information about the occurrence of the disorder, its cause, course, and treatment possibilities.
What is a clinical description?
It includes information about the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that constitute that mental disorder.
Occurrence can only be investigated in one way. True or False.
False. Occurrence can be investigated in several ways.
What are the different ways to investigate occurrence?
- Prevalence
- Incidence
- Comorbidity
What is the first way to investigate occurrence?
First, prevalence is the percentage of people in a population that has a mental disorder or can be viewed as the number of cases divided by the total number of people in the sample. For instance, if 20 people out of 100 have bipolar disorder, then the prevalence rate is 20%.
What are the different ways prevalence can be measured?
- Point prevalence
- Period prevalence
- Lifetime prevalence
What is point prevalence?
Point prevalence indicates the proportion of a population that has the characteristic at a specific point in time. In other words, it is the number of active cases.
What is period prevalence?
Period prevalence indicates the proportion of a population that has the characteristic at any point during a given period of time, typically the past year.
