Early developments of psychiatric epidemiology in Chile: a local history with global implications.

This article examines a 1958 Chilean conference paper titled "Epidemiological research on mental morbidity in Chile," which summarized pioneering psychiatric epidemiological population studies conducted in Chile during the 1940s–1950s. These studies, largely unknown outside Chile, investigated conditions such as alcoholism, psychosis, epilepsy, and neurosis, revealing significant associations between mental health, socioeconomic status, and gender. The article highlights the methodological rigor and culturally sensitive approaches of the Chilean research team, as well as the political and social context that both enabled early mental health reforms and later suppressed psychiatric epidemiology under Pinochet's dictatorship. It argues that these Chilean studies have important implications for promoting decoloniality in psychiatric epidemiology, ensuring methodological rigor in resource-limited settings, and informing community-based mental health policy and services, offering a counterpoint to dominant Global North perspectives.