Mental Health Epidemiology and Statistics Quiz

Mental Health Epidemiology and Statistics Overview

• Psychiatric or mental health epidemiology focuses on the occurrence of mental disorders in a population.
• Clinical descriptions in mental health facilities include information about thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that constitute a mental disorder.
• Occurrence of mental disorders can be investigated through prevalence, which can be measured as point prevalence, period prevalence, or lifetime prevalence.
• According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), in 2015, 4% of all U.S. adults had a serious mental illness, and 17.9% had any mental illness.
• Incidence measures the number of new cases in a population over a specific period and is studied to identify causes and prevent future cases.
• Comorbidity refers to the occurrence of two or more mental disorders at the same time in the same person.
• The National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) found that 45% of those with one mental disorder met the diagnostic criteria for two or more disorders.
• The severity of mental illness and disability are strongly related to comorbidity, and substance use disorders often result from disorders such as anxiety and bipolar mood disorders.
• Etiology, or the cause of the disorder, may have social, biological, or psychological explanations and needs to be understood for appropriate treatment.
• The course of the disorder can be acute, chronic, or time-limited, and prognosis is the anticipated course the mental disorder will take.
• Treatment strategies include medication and psychotherapy provided by trained mental health professionals in various settings such as outpatient facilities or inpatient care at mental hospitals or psychiatric units.
• Treatment may be sought from primary care providers, outpatient facilities, or through inpatient care or hospitalization at mental hospitals or psychiatric units of general hospitals.