Psychiatric Epidemiology

What is the lifetime prevalence of depression in the U.S. population? How does childhood trauma influence the risk of developing PTSD? These are the kinds of questions psychiatric epidemiology aims to answer.

Psychiatric epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School explores the causes of mental disorders by identifying risk factors such as genetics, early life trauma, poverty, substance abuse, and social stressors. Students, fellows, and faculty at the School also examine protective factors like social support and access to healthcare with the ultimate goal of providing an evidence base for shaping public mental health strategies, designing interventions, informing policy, and reducing stigma through data-driven understanding.

The Harvard Chan School’s Psychiatric Epidemiology program consists of specialized courses ranging from statistical genetics to the Foundations of Global Mental Health.  A wide range of research and training opportunities are available.

Highlights of the program include:

• A dedicated concentration on Population Mental Health.  This interdisciplinary concentration enhances public health professionals’ expertise in mental disorders and equips them to address the public health impact of mental disorders both in the U.S. and globally, gaining critical skills for research and practice to understand their causes, consequences, and strategies for reducing their burden.
• Opportunities for students to do practicums (“applied practice experiences”) with labs in the Psychiatric Epidemiology program.  These practicums allow students to take a deep dive into a research project or get hands on experience in the field over 120 to 200 hours.
• Faculty research including:
  • Biological mechanisms linking emotions, social relationships, and health
  • Social and family environmental determinants of brain development, parental feeding, and child eating behavior
  • Genetics and genomics of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia
  • How stigma, discrimination, and structural violence affect the distribution of mental health outcomes in vulnerable populations
  • How violence, trauma, and PTSD alter long-term physical health and accelerate aging
• A collaboration with the Broad Trauma Initiative, which is led by faculty area director Karestan Koenen. The Initiative seeks to understand the biological mechanisms and pathways by which trauma, occurring over the life course, but especially in childhood, get into the bodies of patients and shapes how they think, feel, and behave, often for the remainder of their lives.
• Integrative and multidisciplinary work across the Departments of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Global Health, and Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Learn more about our faculty below: