Cross-cultural epidemiology

Two issues led me into the area of cross-cultural psychiatric epidemiology in the 1980s. The National Institute of Mental Health funded the Epidemiolo gical Catchment Area Studies. One of them included a study of a Caucasian a nd Hispanic populations in Los Angeles. Dr Masaaki Kato, then the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health of Japan, was the consultant for a JAICA-funded project in Lima, Peru. He was interested in fostering psych iatric research there, so I suggested an epidemiological study. This study was done in two phases with Drs Shunichiro Hayashi, Kimpei Minobe and Alber to Perales. Because it is extraordinarily expensive to undertake epidemiolo gical studies in the USA, I met with colleagues regarding psychiatric epide miological studies in Asia, Dr Chung-kyoon Lee at the Seoul National Univer sity in Korea, Dr Eng-Kung Yeh of the National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, Dr Char-nie Chen of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Dr Mas aaki Kato in Japan. Studies have been completed in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong , but not in Japan. In the meantime, very small pilot studies among Asian g roups in Los Angeles were performed. The very recent results of the study o f Chinese in Los Angeles, California, with the Composite International Diag nostic Interview are now available to compare the prevalence of selected ps ychiatric disorders among the Chinese in Los Angeles and the data from the National Co-Morbidity Study.