Coursera - Major Depression in the Population A Public Health Approach

Public Mental Health is the application of the principles of medicine and social science to prevent the occurrence of mental and behavioral disorders and to promote mental health of the population. This course illustrates the principles of public health applied to depressive disorder, including principles of epidemiology, transcultural psychiatry, health services research, and prevention. It is predicted that by 2020 depressive disorder will be the most important cause of disease burden in the entire world!

Every human being suffers from feeling depressed at some point or other, but only about one fifth of the population will experience an episode of depressive disorder over the course of their lives. This course illuminates the public health approach to disease, and the particular complexities of applying this approach to mental disorders, using depression as the exemplar.

Syllabus:

What is depression and what is depressive disorder?
How common is depressive disorder
The Global Burden of Depressive Disorder
Crosscultural variation in depression and depressive disorder
Epidemiologic research to uncover the causes of depression
Research on prevention of depression
The system of care for psychiatric disorders and depression