Medical and Psychiatric Comorbidity Over the Course of Life reviews the comorbidity of mental and chronic physical syndromes in an epidemiological and life course context, offering fresh insights and identifying crucial clues to the etiology and nosological distinctiveness of both physical and mental disorders.

Compiled from presentations given at the 2004 American Psychopathological Association (APPA) annual meeting, "Medical and Psychiatric Comorbidity Over the Course of Life" reviews the comorbidity of mental and chronic physical syndromes in an epidemiological and life course context, offering fresh insights and identifying crucial clues?gleaned from the overlapping areas or areas of mutual pathogenesis linking disparate realms of knowledge?to the etiology and nosological distinctiveness of both physical and mental disorders. Once relatively ignored, the study of lifetime comorbidity has the potential to suggest etiological clues and to advance our ability to prevent secondary disorders by increasing our knowledge about the course and pathology of the primary disease.