Psychiatric epidemiology is a field which seeks to study the conceptualization,
etiology, and
prevalence of
mental illness in society. It is a subfield of the more general
epidemiology. It is very difficult to accurately study mental illness conceptualization, etiology, and prevalence, and current techniques are relatively poor. Two areas of concern, sometimes called the crisis of psychiatric epidemiology today, are the high estimates of
mental illness that many studies produce and the difference in results between studies.