Examines psychiatric epidemiology's unique evolution, conceptually and
socially, within and between diverse regions and cultures, underscoring
its growing influence on the biopolitics of nations and worldwide health
campaigns.
Psychiatric epidemiology, like the epidemiology of cancer, heart
disease, or AIDS, contributes increasingly to shaping the biopolitics of
nations and worldwide health campaigns. Despite the field's importance,
this is the first volume of historical scholarship addressing
psychiatric epidemiology. It seeks to comprehensively trace the
development of the discipline and the mobilization of its constructs,
methods, and tools to further social ends. It is through this double
lens--conceptual and social--that it envisions the history of
psychiatric epidemiology. Furthermore, its chapters constitute elements
for that history as a global phenomenon, formed by multiple approaches.
Those numerous historical paths have not resulted in a uniform
disciplinary field based on a common paradigm, as happened arguably in
the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease and cancer, but in a
plurality of psychiatric epidemiologies driven by different intellectual
questions, political strategies, reformist ideals, national cultures,
colonial experiences, international influences, and social control
objectives. When examined together, the chapters depict an uneven global
development of epidemiologies formed within distinct political-cultural
regions but influenced by the transnational circulation and selective
uptake of concepts, techniques, and expertise. These moved through
multidirectional pathways between and within the Global North and South.
Authored by historians, anthropologists, and psychiatrists, chapters
trace this complex history, focusing on Brazil, Nigeria, Senegal, India,
Taiwan, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, as well
as multicountry networks.
