A Life Course Approach to Mental Disorders
Karestan C. Koenen, Sasha Rudenstine, Ezra Susser, and Sandro Galea
Abstract
A life course approach to mental disorders is concerned with the interplay of social and biological factors in the production of mental illness over the life span – from the postnatal period to old age. Life course epidemiology considers this interplay in the population-based context with specific focus on its relevance to public health. The ageing 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. Although the ageing of birth co ... More
A life course approach to mental disorders is concerned with the interplay of social and biological factors in the production of mental illness over the life span – from the postnatal period to old age. Life course epidemiology considers this interplay in the population-based context with specific focus on its relevance to public health. The ageing 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. Although the ageing of birth cohorts has been accompanied by an explosion in research in the life course epidemiology of mental disorders, there currently exists no single source that has brought this research together with the goal of forging a consensus on the current science and pointing the way to next steps for the field. This book therefore aims to be first comprehensive articulation of a life course perspective on mental disorders. Researchers are brought together from disparate disciplines—epidemiology, developmental psychopathology, psychiatric genetics, sociology, developmental cognitive neuroscience, and epigenetics—to review the methods and synthesize the existing knowledge about the life course epidemiology of mental disorders in populations. This book also discusses the mechanisms that drive the production of mental disorders over the life course and of emerging areas of research in the field. The goal is to bring together the state of the science of life course epidemiology to inform training, research, practice, and policy with regard to mental disorders.
Keywords:
life course,
epidemiology,
mental disorders,
cognitive neuroscience,
epigenetics,
development,
birth cohort
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199657018 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199657018.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Karestan C. Koenen, editor
Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, USA
Sasha Rudenstine, editor
Columbia University Epidemiology Merit Fellow, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, USA
Ezra Susser, editor
Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and New York State Psychiatric Institute, USA
Sandro Galea, editor
Gelman Professor and Chair, Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, USA
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