Child psychiatric epidemiology: current status and future prospects.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this paper is to present selected findings from child psychiatric epidemiology in areas of prevalence and correlates, and discuss issues in interpreting these data and their relevance.

METHOD

Selected references were used.

RESULTS

Prevalence rates of 1 or more child psychiatric disorders in nonclinical community samples of children and adolescents vary between 17.6% and 22%. Issues in interpreting these data include: the boundary between normal and abnormal, boundary between disorders, disagreement among informants, and problems with instrumentation. Knowledge about the correlates of child psychiatric disorders is quite extensive, but information on causal factors is relatively sparse.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings in child psychiatric epidemiology are relevant to clinicians, and future emphasis in the field will be on prospective studies with multiple waves of data from different domains including the child, the family, the school, and the wider community.