WPA Section (Epidemiology and...)

Our Section counts the Aberdeen meeting as its first event.

It is fortunate that Nuffield Trust posted this volume and has made it available.

http://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/sites/files/nuffield/publication/psychiatric_epidemiology_1970.pdf

Take my advice and download your own copy, and study it.

Trace the themes forward.

Mechanic puts in print what we all know.
In epidemiology, the size of the prevalence estimate can be made as large or as small as you like (or as is liked by the funding agency).

Worked Example: See the original NIMH ECA estimates from 1984-85, and the downward re-visitation of those estimates created by introducing a novel "clinical significance" criterion.

I will try to insert the citations later on, or someone can post a comment with them.

I am thinking of Jerry Myers et al. ECA-paper from 1984 (maybe 1985?) and the paper in which Bill Narrow and Darrel Regier introduced their novel criterion to bring down the ECA estimates, perhaps 1989-2000.

(We put this sort of criterion to good use in our World Mental Health Surveys work on alcohol and other drug dependence.)