The Department of Social Psychiatry has developed and sustains a program of research on important substantive and methodological issues in psychiatric epidemiology. The focus of the substantive research is on questions about the role of adversity and stress in the onset and course of psychiatric disorders that are inversely related to socioeconomic status (SES) -- especially schizophrenia, major depression, antisocial personality, alcoholism, substance use disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The methodological issues center on how to conceptualize and measure major stressful life events as risk factors for the development of disorders that are inversely related to SES.
