Epidemiology of mental disorders in Chile and its impact on public mental health policies, 1950-1973

Abstract

Beginning in the 1950s, a group of chilean psychiatrists began to converge around the epidemiology of mental disorders. Neither psychiatry nor mental health had successfully positioned themselves on the public stage, as “physical” health and medicine had. Since the previous decade, psychiatrists had been looking for this positioning, mainly through the introduction and application of biological therapies. We propose that from the influence of the social sciences and the limited success of psychiatric treatments, the development of epidemiological studies meant a renewal in the role of psychiatry and psychiatrists in the public health scene.