Main description:

Part of the new American Pyschopathological Association Series. Containing contributions from leading scholars of causal thinking in epidemiology and psychopathology research, this volume is based on presentations at the ground-breaking 2008 meeting of the American Psychopathological Association. The authors explore the meaning of causal statements that are made from statistical and experimental evidence; then, they suggest novel approaches to analyze these
statements and thus make them more informative and medically rigorous. The collection of chapters uniquely includes both methodological contributions and detailed assessments of how causal inferences can be made when considering research results on developmental psychopathology, clinical
psychopharmacology, personality disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and psychiatric genetics. In analyzing causal references, the authors examine controversies surrounding various disorders and their treatment.

Contents:

Causal Theory and Scientific Inference

1) Causal Thinking in Psychopathology Research
Patrick E. Shrout, PhD

2) What Would Have Been is Not What Would Be: Counterfactuals of the Past and Potential Outcomes of the Future
Sharon Schwartz, PhD, Nicolle M. Gatto, PhD, Ulka B. Campbell, PhD,

3) The Mathematics of Causal Relations
Judea Pearl, PhD

4) Causal Thinking in Psychiatry: A Genetic and Manipulationist Perspective
Kenneth S. Kendler, MD

5) Understanding the Effects of Menopausal Hormone Therapy: Using the Women's Health Initiative Randomized Trials and Observational Study to Improve Inference
Garnet L Anderson, PhD, Ross L Prentice, PhD,

Innovations in Methods

6) Alternative Graphical Causal Models and the Identification of Direct Effects
James Robins, MD, Thomas Richardson, PhD

7) General Approaches to Analysis of Course: Applying Growth Mixture Modeling to Randomized Trials of Depression Medication
Bengt Muthen, PhD, Hendricks C. Brown, PhD, Aimee M. Hunter, PhD,
Ian A. Cook, MD, Andrew F. Leuchter, MD

8) Statistical Methodology for a SMART Design in the Development of Adaptive Treatment Strategies
Alena I. Oetting, M.S., Janet A. Levy, PhD, Roger D. Weiss, MD,
Susan A. Murphy, PhD

9) Obtaining Robust Causal Evidence from Observational Studies: Can Genetic Epidemiology Help?
George Davey Smith MD, DSc

10) Rare Variant Approaches to Understanding the Causes of Complex Neuropsychiatric Disorders
Matthew W. State, MD, PhD,

Causal Thinking in Psychiatry

11) Causal Thinking in Developmental Disorders
E. Jane Costello, PhD, Adrian Angold, MRCPsych

12) Causes of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Naomi Breslau, PhD

13) Causal Thinking for Objective Psychiatric Diagnostic Criteria: A Programmatic Approach in Therapeutic Context
Donald F. Klein, MD, DSc

14) The Need for Dimensional Approaches in Discerning the Origins of Psychopathology
Robert F. Krueger, PhD, Daniel J. Goldman