Definition Of Epidemiology

Epidemiology is usually defined as the study of the distribution and determinants of disease, but it isn’t really: it’s only the study of those things insofar as they’re NOT studied by other fields which came first historically. E.g. if something is physiology or chemistry then it’s not epidemiology.

relevance to psychiatry?

Adam adds:

There also seems to be a purely (but fairly unhelpful) descriptive arm of epidemiology. But as far as epidemiology being used in anyway to base decisions there seems to need to be an absence of causal story. So all the focus goes to correlation in the hope that a causal story can be found (and once it is we are back outside the realm of epidemiology, and into biology/chemistry etc).