Epidemiology, Etiology, and Risk Factors in Mental Health

This video describes the concepts of epidemiology, etiology, and risk factors. Epidemiology includes studying the risk factors, causes, progression, characteristics, and distribution of mental health disorders (or any disorder). Etiological factors are causal, although in the mental health treatment field, etiology can be difficult if not impossible to identify for many mental health disorders. If a factor is truly etiological to a specific mental health disorder, then removing that factor, in theory, would prevent the development of that mental health disorder. Risk factors are associated with the development of a mental health disorder, but are not necessarily etiological. All etiological factors are risk factors, but not all risk factors are etiological.