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Child Psychiatric Epidemiology

Implications for Clinical Research and Practice

  • Chapter
Advances in Clinical Child Psychology

Part of the book series: Advances in Clinical Child Psychology ((ACCP,volume 13))

Abstract

What has epidemiology, the study of disease “among the people,” to contribute to clinical research, the study of disease “in the clinic”? In this chapter, I shall discuss recent developments in child psychiatric epidemiology with this question in mind. The answers to the question are important because they affect the validity and generalizability—that is, the practical usefulness—of much of current research into child psycho- pathology. The message of this chapter is that there are serious limitations on the ability of either type of research alone to answer questions about the causes and consequences of psychopathology in childhood. Epidemiology needs clinical observation and experience to distinguish abnormal behavior and affect from the wide range of normal variability, and to suggest causal links between specific problems and specific factors in children of their environment. Clinical research needs epidemiology to examine whether these putative causal links are found in children in general, or only in the very select subgroup that comes for treatment. Once a possible causal link has been identified, both clinical and epidemiological researchers need to work together on preventive and treatment interventions that are rigorously tested through the correct choice of control groups and research design. Clinical and epidemiological research are not conflicting approaches to the problems of child psychopathology, but equally essential, complementary, attitudes of mind that serve different functions at different stages in the research process.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Duke University, 27710, Durham, North Carolina, USA

    Elizabeth J. Costello

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  1. Elizabeth J. Costello
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA

    Benjamin B. Lahey

  2. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

    Alan E. Kazdin

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Costello, E.J. (1990). Child Psychiatric Epidemiology. In: Lahey, B.B., Kazdin, A.E. (eds) Advances in Clinical Child Psychology. Advances in Clinical Child Psychology, vol 13. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9835-6_2

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