Cecflia Amaro de Lolio
Psychiatric epidemiology
Departamento
de Epidemiologia
Faculdade de Saude Publica da USP
T he changes that happened in the epidem iological and psychiatric fields of w ork propitiated the gathering of data that w ere ungatherable before. T he prevalence of m ental and behavioral disorders, as w ell as the health care to patients w ith these pathologies are being under surveillance in several areas of the w orld m ainly in the U nites States of A m erica, A prelim inary phase of the psyquiatric epidem iologic studies consist on in-hospital m orbidity statistics. A nother phase con-sisted on lim ited populational studies, confined to certain as-pects of the psyquiatric disorders, such as that of alcohol and drug dependence. Finally, w ith the advance of diagnostic m ethods that could replace the psychiatric interview , w ith a crescent involvem ent of lay personnel, it w as possible to ob-tain prevalence rates in the general population or at least in E pidem iologic C atchm ent A reas (E C A s). A n im portant
ex-am ple of this kind of interview in the C om posite International D iagostic Interview (C ID I - O M S / N ational Institute of M ental H ealth / U nited States), a set of questions on several topics of m ental disorders, w ith a softw are that m akes the diagnosis according to the International C lassification of D iseases -10th R evision, and to the D SM -Ill-R . A nother im portant evo-lution of the Psychiatric E pidem iology is the design and im ple-m entation of structured psychiatric interview s, such as that of the Schedules for A ssessm ent in N europsychiatry (SC A N ), a gold standard for surveys (a subsam ple is designed to be eva-luated, and positive predictive values can be cauculated).
N ew horizons for research in Psychiatric E pidem iology in B razil are discussed, m ainly after the im plem entation of the E pidem iologic C atchm ent of Sao Paulo in 1994.
