Our Family Studies

In our everyday clinical experiences, many of the concerns about the well-being of the family have appeared in all-too-human form as adults and children in distress. Their problems, the rapidly changing social scene, and our long-standing interest in the epidemiology of the mental disorders combined to stimulate us to undertake a series of family studies. Three other major factors coalesced to increase our interest. One was the influence of James Grier Miller, president of the University of Louisville and a professor in its Department of Psychiatry, and the publication of his definitive General Living Systems (1978), which supplied the theory needed for our studies. The second was the development of instruments for community studies of mental disorder, based on the new American Psychiatric Association diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM-III), that were being used effectively in the Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) studies (Freedman, 1984). The third was that after those studies were completed, there would be need for the field of psychiatric epidemiology to make a conceptual and methodological leap forward.