Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology

Social psychiatry is a subspecialty of psychiatry that examines the interpersonal and cultural contexts of mental illness and well-being. Social psychiatry blends medical expertise and perspective with social anthropology, social psychology, cultural psychiatry, sociology, and other sciences concerned with mental suffering and illness. Social psychiatry has been linked to the creation of therapeutic communities as well as the recognition of the impact of socioeconomic variables on mental disease. Biopsychiatry is a branch of social psychiatry that focuses on genetics, brain neurochemistry, and medicine. For much of the twentieth century, social psychiatry was the dominant kind of psychiatry, although it is now less visible than biopsychiatry.

Individuals, families, and society can benefit most from social psychiatry when it comes to developing mental health promotion and preventing specific mental diseases.

The concept of big "life events" as precipitants of mental ill health, such as bereavement, promotion, relocation, or having a child, was developed in part by social psychiatry.

Many therapeutic communities that were once inpatient facilities are now day centres, with an emphasis on borderline personality disorder and operated by psychotherapists or art therapists rather than psychiatrists.

Social psychiatrists assist in the cross-cultural application of psychiatric diagnoses and judgments of need or disadvantage, demonstrating specific linkages between mental illness and unemployment, overcrowding, and single-parent homes.

Self-esteem and self-efficacy are also linked to mental health, and thus to socioeconomic variables, by social psychiatrists.

Rather than "therapy," social psychiatrists frequently focus on rehabilitation in a social environment.
 
The goal of modern social psychiatry is to make it easier for people with mental illnesses to integrate into society.

Psychiatric epidemiology is a branch of epidemiology that looks into the causes of mental problems in society, as well as the conceptualization and prevalence of mental illness.