National Statistics in the Epidemiology of Mental Illness

1959 ◽  
Vol 105 (441) ◽  
pp. 893-908 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen M. Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Heart Disease ◽  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Statistics ◽  
Causative Agents ◽  
Long Time

For a long time epidemiology was a term associated with the study of outbreaks of disease which were sudden and large-scale. The attempt to find common causative agents to which the majority of cases could be attributed has provoked a literature worthy to rank with some of the best detective fiction. So many of the guilty agents have now been either liquidated or rendered impotent that infectious illnesses have ceased to occupy the centre of the public health stage, and have yielded place, as objects of concern, to such chronic diseases as cancer, rheumatism, heart disease and the schizophrenias. These diseases do not generally show explosive outbreaks, although mental disorders have been known to behave in this way, as witness the outbreaks of Dancing Mania which originated in Italy in the thirteenth century. All this has led to a more exact concept of epidemiology as “the study of the distribution of a disease or condition in a population and of the factors that influence this distribution” (Lilienfeld (1)).

Conceptualizing the Challenge and Moving to Solutions

2018 ◽  
pp. 237-266
Author(s):  
Alan E. Kazdin
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Substance Use ◽  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Physical Health ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Grand Challenges ◽  
Substance Use And Abuse

This chapter places the challenge of reducing the burdens of mental illness in broader contexts and progresses from these to concrete recommendations on how to proceed toward next steps. The notions of wicked problems and grand challenges provide two contexts for understanding the challenge. From broad concepts, the chapter moves to means of addressing challenges and making progress in concrete ways to reduce the burdents of mental illness. Illustrations are provided of promising efforts in relation to physical health, mental disorders, and substance use and abuse. The critical role of assessment, especially large-scale surveillance measures from public health, is also discussed.

scholarly journals Privacy, security, and the public health researcher in the era of electronic health record research

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Neal D Goldstein ◽  
Anand D Sarwate
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Data Privacy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Health Data ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
Privacy And Security ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Researcher ◽  
Public Health Researcher ◽  
Electronic Health

Health data derived from electronic health records are increasingly utilized in large-scale population health analyses. Going hand in hand with this increase in data is an increasing number of data breaches. Ensuring privacy and security of these data is a shared responsibility between the public health researcher, collaborators, and their institutions. In this article, we review the requirements of data privacy and security and discuss epidemiologic implications of emerging technologies from the computer science community that can be used for health data. In order to ensure that our needs as researchers are captured in these technologies, we must engage in the dialogue surrounding the development of these tools.

scholarly journals Silver Linings Reported by Australians Experiencing Public Health Restrictions during the First Phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Report

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (21) ◽  
pp. 11406
Author(s):  
Narelle Campbell ◽  
Sandra C. Thompson ◽  
Anna Tynan ◽  
Louise Townsin ◽  
Lauren A. Booker ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Rapid Identification ◽  
National Study ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Mental Well Being

This national study investigated the positives reported by residents experiencing the large-scale public health measures instituted in Australia to manage the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Most Australians had not previously experienced the traditional public health measures used (social distancing, hand hygiene and restriction of movement) and which could potentially impact negatively on mental well-being. The research design included qualitative semi-structured phone interviews where participants described their early pandemic experiences. Data analysis used a rapid identification of themes technique, well-suited to large-scale qualitative research. The ninety participants (mean age 48 years; 70 women) were distributed nationally. Analysis revealed five themes linked with mental well-being and the concept of silver linings: safety and security, gratitude and appreciation, social cohesion and connections, and opportunities to reset priorities and resilience. Participants demonstrated support for the public health measures and evidence of individual and community resilience. They were cognisant of positives despite personal curtailment and negative impacts of public health directives. Stories of hope, strength, and acceptance, innovative connections with others and focusing on priorities and opportunities within the hardship were important strategies that others could use in managing adversity.

scholarly journals Measuring the scientific effectiveness of contact tracing: Evidence from a natural experiment

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (33) ◽  
pp. e2100814118
Author(s):  
Thiemo Fetzer ◽  
Thomas Graeber
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Public Health Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Random Breakdown ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Health Authorities

Contact tracing has for decades been a cornerstone of the public health approach to epidemics, including Ebola, severe acute respiratory syndrome, and now COVID-19. It has not yet been possible, however, to causally assess the method’s effectiveness using a randomized controlled trial of the sort familiar throughout other areas of science. This study provides evidence that comes close to that ideal. It exploits a large-scale natural experiment that occurred by accident in England in late September 2020. Because of a coding error involving spreadsheet data used by the health authorities, a total of 15,841 COVID-19 cases (around 20% of all cases) failed to have timely contact tracing. By chance, some areas of England were much more severely affected than others. This study finds that the random breakdown of contact tracing led to more illness and death. Conservative causal estimates imply that, relative to cases that were initially missed by the contact tracing system, cases subject to proper contact tracing were associated with a reduction in subsequent new infections of 63% and a reduction insubsequent COVID-19–related deaths of 66% across the 6 wk following the data glitch.

Global Burden of Mental Disorders

2017 ◽  
pp. 164-186
Author(s):  
Meghamala S. Tavaragi ◽  
Sushma C.
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Help Seeking ◽  
Disease Burden ◽  
Economic Loss ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Public Health Professionals ◽  
Increase Risk

Mental disorders are an important cause of long-term disability and dependency. It accounts for over 15% of the disease burden in developed countries, which is more than the disease burden caused by all cancers. Mental illness is a leading cause of suffering, economic loss and social problems. The burden of mental disorders is likely to have been underestimated because of inadequate appreciation of the connectedness between mental illness and other health conditions. Mental disorders increase risk for communicable and non-communicable diseases, and contribute to unintentional and intentional injury, and comorbidity complicates help-seeking, diagnosis, and treatment, and influences prognosis. Consequently, health professionals have trivialized the issue of mental illness. It is essential that researchers and public health professionals work together to resolve the enormous public health crisis presented by mental disorders. In short, we must “mainstream” mental health.

Farewell to antiquarianism. A new ‘grand narrative’ for German-speaking prehistoric archaeology?

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-29
Author(s):  
Ulrich Veit
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Positive Development ◽  
Prehistoric Archaeology ◽  
Cooperative Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Long Time ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Year 2000

I would first like to thank the editors of Archaeological dialogues for inviting me to comment on Kerstin P. Hofmann and Philipp W. Stockhammer's paper on the present situation of archaeological theory in German-speaking prehistoric archaeology (GSA). The message the authors wish to communicate to an international audience is relatively simple and straightforward. GSA, which for a long time seemed ‘generally uninterested in theoretical debates’ (p. 1), has since about the year 2000 radically changed its outlook. This change is seen reflected in a large corpus of theoretically oriented case studies (represented in a list of some four hundred titles added to the paper), that in the eyes of the authors deserves the attention of the international scientific community. This positive development is interpreted as a result both of a growing interest in overarching research questions of cultural studies and of the public funding of large-scale cooperative research projects.

scholarly journals Excess Mortality in England during the 2019 Summer Heatwaves

Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Natasha Rustemeyer ◽  
Mark Howells
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Excess Mortality ◽  
Summer Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Statistics ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Excess Deaths ◽  
Related Mortality

There is increasing evidence that rising temperatures and heatwaves in the United Kingdom are associated with an increase in heat-related mortality. However, the Public Health England (PHE) Heatwave mortality monitoring reports, which use provisional death registrations to estimate heat-related mortality in England during heatwaves, have not yet been evaluated. This study aims to retrospectively quantify the impact of heatwaves on mortality during the 2019 summer period using daily death occurrences. Second, using the same method, it quantifies the heat-related mortality for the 2018 and 2017 heatwave periods. Last, it compares the results to the estimated excess deaths for the same period in the PHE Heatwave mortality monitoring reports. The number of cumulative excess deaths during the summer 2019 heatwaves were minimal (161) and were substantially lower than during the summer 2018 heatwaves (1700 deaths) and summer 2017 heatwaves (1489 deaths). All findings were at variance with the PHE Heatwave mortality monitoring reports which estimated cumulative excess deaths to be 892, 863 and 778 during the heatwave periods of 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively. Issues are identified in the use of provisional death registrations for mortality monitoring and the reduced reliability of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) daily death occurrences database before 2019. These findings may identify more reliable ways to monitor heat mortality during heatwaves in the future.

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