Course Introduction to psychiatric epidemiology

The course A291 Introduction to Psychiatric Epidemiology is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, 2025.

Criteria for participation: University degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, or Master’s degree in other fields and/or postgraduate research fellows (PhD students and research-year medical students).

Aim: To introduce students to key issues, concepts, and research methods in psychiatric epidemiology. This course will provide an overview of current knowledge in psychiatry based on epidemiological research by highlighting the dynamic interplay of risk factors across the person (biology, psychology), context (family, social, neighbourhood, workplace, society) and time (societal and diagnostic changes across time), and the epidemiological methods used in psychiatric epidemiology.

Learning outcomes: 

• Demonstrate knowledge of basic concepts psychiatric epidemiology and its relevance for public health.
• Discuss common study designs used in psychiatric epidemiology, including cohort, case-control and register-based designs, as well as methods for integrating biological and socio-demographic perspectives in psychiatric epidemiology.
• Describe the main type of data sources and measurements used in psychiatric epidemiology and explain their strengths and weaknesses.
• Explain the applications of these methods for the study of etiology, treatment, and outcome in psychiatric disorders.
• Describe, on a broad level, the current knowledge of the main adult and child psychiatric disorders based on psychiatric epidemiologic research and identify areas in need of further research.
• Independently evaluate psychiatric epidemiology studies from scientific literature.

Workload: The full workload of the course is expected to be 37 hours

Content: Teaching is in the form of interactive lectures and group discussions, where students will be required to critically evaluate assigned psychiatric epidemiology articles. There will be time allocated for the course assignment in which students will be required to present an overview of the current state of research for a specific psychiatric disorder and formulate a research idea which could address knowledge gaps for said disorder. The assignment is the mandatory evaluation for course participation and will be conducted in groups or individually, depending on the number of course participants.

Day 1: Overview of psychiatric epidemiology: history, measurement, and risk factors

Day 2: Adult-onset psychiatric disorders

Day 3: Childhood-onset psychiatric disorders

Day 4: Special topics and presentations

Instructors: Katherine L. Musliner + guest lecturers

Venue: Aarhus University, Aarhus (other)

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Health Research Year students from Aarhus University
• PhD students enrolled at partner universities of the Nordoc collaboration
• PhD students from other institutions in the open market agreement for PhD courses

Course dates:

• 17 March 2025 09:00 - 15:30
• 18 March 2025 09:00 - 15:30
• 20 March 2025 09:00 - 15:30
• 21 March 2025 09:00 - 15:30