Course Introduction to psychiatric epidemiology

Title: Introduction to Psychiatric Epidemiology

Reg.no: A291/02

is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, 2021

Criteria for participation: University or Master’s degree in medicine, public health, psychology, dentistry, nursing, or other related fields (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, neighborhood, workplace, society) and time (societal and diagnostic changes across time), and the epidemiological methods used in psychiatric epidemiology.

Learning outcomes: At the end of the course the student should be able to:

• 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 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.

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: Lectures on the history of psychiatric epidemiology, measurement in psychiatric epidemiology, genetics and psychiatric epidemiology, social epidemiology of psychiatric disorder & future directions in psychiatric epidemiology.

Day 2: Lectures on the epidemiology of adult onset psychiatric disorder and group discussions on research article.

Day 3: Lectures on the epidemiology of childhood onset psychiatric disorder and time to work on course assignment.

Day 4: Lectures on other issues in psychiatric epidemiology (comorbidity, prevention, and treatment research). The last day of the course will include presentations of the course assignment.

Recommended knowledge for participation: Basic knowledge of epidemiology at Master’s or PhD level.

Place: National Centre for Register‐based Research, Department of Economics and Business Economics Aarhus BSS, Fuglesangs Allé 26

At room nr 2641-130

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Research Year students and Research Honours Programme 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:

• 15 March 2021 09:00 - 15:30
• 16 March 2021 09:00 - 15:30
• 18 March 2021 09:00 - 15:30
• 19 March 2021 09:00 - 15:30