ABSTRACT
Psychiatric educators and mental health policy makers in the USA continue to pay lip-service to the implications of the epidemiologic data for modifications in the organization of service delivery and in the education of generalists. Epidemiology provides a scientific frame and methodology for systematic data gathering. The application of the methods of psychiatric epidemiology to the study of mental health problems in primary health care is a development. Wade Hampton Frost, in his introduction to a reprint of John Snow’s work on cholera, reminded the reader: Epidemiology at any given time is something more than the total of its established facts. In both the USA and the UK, epidemiologic research has demonstrated that there is a sizeable mental health burden manifested by disability as well as distress in the community. Public-health policy decisions reflect value judgements -informed by science but value judgements none the less; thus they are, in the final analysis, political decisions.
