Ezra Susser - Böcker

Searching for the causes of mental disorders is as exciting as it is complex. The relationship between pathophysiology and its overt manifestations is exceedingly intricate, and often the causes of a disorder are elusive at best. This book is an invaluable resource for anyone trying to track these causes, whether they be clinical researchers, public health practitioners, or psychiatric epidemiologists-in-training. Uniting theory and practice in very clear language, it makes a wonderful contribution to both epidemiologic and psychiatric research. Rather than attempting to review the descriptive epidemiology of mental disorders, this book gives a much more dynamic exposition of the thinking and techniques used to establish it.Starting out by tracing the brief history of psychiatric epidemiology, the book describes the study of risk factors as causes of mental disorders. Subsequent sections discuss approaches to investigation of biologic, genetic or social causes and the statistical analysis of study results. The book concludes by following some of the problems involved in the search for genetic causes of mental disorders, and more complex causal relationships.

A Life Course Approach to the Epidemiology of Chronic Diseases and Ageing, Third Edition outlines how biological and social factors during gestation, childhood, adolescence and earlier adult life influence later life health and disease. It also looks at whether and how to intervene to improve health outcomes.This revised third edition is fully updated to reflect the new data that has emerged as well as our new understanding of health and global challenges. It brings new chapters on a life course approach to the long-term health consequences of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the current and potential use of new technologies, methods and collaborative approaches in life course studies and provides updated reviews of the latest life course evidence for age-related chronic diseases. It discusses how life course research is being used, and could be used, to improve population health in high, middle, and low-income countries, identifying how and when interventions may be most effective. New chapters on multimorbidity, translational geroscience and exposomics have also been added.

A Life Course Approach to Mental Disorders examines the interplay of social and biological factors in the production of a wide range of mental disorders throughout life, from the peri-natal period through to old age. The aging into adulthood of numerous birth cohorts, especially over the past twenty years, has provided increasing evidence that mental disorders previously perceived to emerge in adulthood may have their origins early in life. This book brings together, in a single resource, the research in life course epidemiology of mental disorders, forging a consensus on the current science and pointing the way forward for the field. Assembling researchers across disparate disciplines including epidemiology, developmental psychopathology, psychiatric genetics, sociology, developmental cognitive neuroscience, and epigenetics the book reviews the methods and synthesizes existing knowledge about the life course epidemiology of mental disorders in populations. It also presents discussions of the mechanisms that drive the production of mental disorders over the life course including emerging areas of research in the field. A Life Course Approach to Mental Disorders brings together the state-of-the-art science of life course epidemiology to inform training, research, practice and policy with regard to mental disorders. The first comprehensive articulation of a life course perspective in the area, it will be a key resource for academics, researchers and students.

An international team of leading researchers and clinicians here provide a comprehensive, epidemiological overview of this multi-faceted and still perplexing disorder, and address some of the key questions it raises. How important in the genetic contribution to schizophrenia? Do pregnancy and birth complications increase the risk for schizophrenia? Is the incidence of schizophrenia changing? Why is the rate higher among immigrants and in those born in cities? Controversial issues such as the validity of discrete or dimensional classifications of schizophrenia and the continuum between psychosis and 'normality' are explored in depth, and separate chapters are devoted to topics of particular relevance to schizophrenia such as suicide, violence and substance abuse. Finally, new prospects for treatment and prevention are considered. Drawing together the findings from social, genetic, developmental and classical epidemiology of schizophrenia, this text will prove an invaluable resource for clinicians and researchers.