Abstract
This article explores the Chicago School of Sociology’s influence on psychiatric epidemiology. While the Chicago School text usually associated with psychiatric epidemiology is the 1939 book by Faris and Dunham, it is important to acknowledge the influence of earlier Chicago School projects during the 1920s. These projects, tackling everything from homelessness and delinquency to the ghetto and suicide, provided models not only for Faris and Dunham, but also for numerous methodological and theoretical insights for the social psychiatry projects that would emerge after World War II. The social sciences and the humanities still have important roles to play in informing contemporary approaches to psychiatric epidemiology and deriving ways to tackle the socio-economic problems that contribute to mental illness.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 11-29 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | History of Psychiatry |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 6 Dec 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2024 |
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research resulted from Arts and Humanities Research Council Grant AH/L009641/1, ‘An Ounce of Prevention: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States, 1939–Present’.
Keywords
- Chicago School of Sociology
- psychiatric epidemiology
- influence
- homelessness
- delinquency
- suicide
- socioeconomic problems
- mental illness
