This section will provide an update of the epidemiology of child psychiatric disorders through a summary of the evidence from prior reviews and presentation of the findings from new studies that have not been included in previous summaries. We limit our review to studies that apply the DSM-IV criteria, and include direct structured interviews of children and reports regarding child symptoms and functioning from a parent or primary caretaker. The methods of community studies of children and adolescents that meet these criteria are presented in Table I. The results of several new studies in the US have become available during the past 5 years. US studies include two community surveys in North Carolina, the most recent follow-up on the Great Smoky Mountains Study12 and a study of rural white and African-American youth,13 a large multiethnic study of adolescents in Houston, Texas,14 and a population-based study of children in Puerto Rico.15 The results of two very large studies of children and adolescents ages 5 to 15 in Great Britain have also provided data on the prevalence, correlates, and service patterns of British youth (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/).
