Calculating the lifetime prevalence of mental disorder

Its not fucking 1 in 4 in a lifetime you bunch of cunts. Right. Now. I've got that out the way...

The lifetime prevalence is not established for the UK. The lifetime prevalence of what is an important question.

What I mean is the lifetime prevalence of mental distress or common mental disorders or mental health problems needs to be accurately defined before the question can be answered.

The rest is easy. Well...almost.... the easy bit is then turning into a research question. Have you ever felt a prolonged period of distress or have you ever had a mental health diagnosis or whatever ever in your life. The perfect way would be accurate medical records and the imperfect but practical way is a census question.

The realistic proposal is an accurately age stratfied sample of sufficient size which is otherwise randomised.

There is still the problem of recall of information and other reasons for lack of reporting a positive hit for the research question. This could be partially measured by comparing responses with available medical records. This element finds the multiplying factor between the reported and actual experiences of mental distress, if by definition the question asks for a medical diagnosis and treatment which is recorded correctly in the medical records.

It is something better than nothing to improve the accuracy of the estimate. A functional proxy is the reciept of services - a service user - but a broader definition would include more people. For example if the question was asked - have you ever felt emotionally unwell for two weeks ever in your life would garner a much higher response rate.

There would be significant debate about whether this is a suitable research question or simply something to be used for mental health charity PR. The epidiemology of human suffering is not currently considered a subject worth studying nor is the treatment because all psychiatric research is based on measures of psychopathology rather than specifically distress or even self report of unwellness.

I kid you not. Anyway, science and measures and concepts and my chocolate salty balls.

Sent from my smartphone