Mental Health Prevention: Moving forward with the Evidence

Since the dawn of the psychiatric profession, generations of psychiatrists have been trained to recognize, diagnose, and treat mental conditions based on late-stage symptoms. Schizophrenia is a paradigmatic example where it is now clear that its diagnostic and treatable manifestations occur when pathophysiological mechanisms have been acting for years. Even the concepts of chronicity and disease progression are largely debated and currently attributed, at least partially, to delay and inefficiency in care. A preventive approach to such conditions promises to change their course by intervening earlier when there is much more room for improvement, as universally observed in any medical field, from cardiac disease to cancer. To do that, as psychiatrists, we need new eyes for old problems. If cardiologists and oncologists have succeeded in rewinding the tape from myocardial infarction to atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease as well as from cancer to precursors lesion or hyperplasia, we are struggling to do the same, in terms of medical terminology, screening, and practice. Also, we cannot be alone in this process. There is a need for a prevention system encompassing mental, primary, and social care, where major determinants of mental conditions can be tracked down to reduce the number of new diagnoses. Even more broadly, there is a compelling need to join forces between healthcare professionals, policy makers, and the public about the possibility to implement mental health preventative strategies and sustain every individual’s ability to reach satisfactory outcomes in life.

In particular, the aims of this topical collection will be:

- to evaluate the impact of biological and psychosocial risk factors for mental conditions in the context of a preventative perspective

- to unveil longitudinal behavioral and pharmacological preventative strategies to mitigate pathological trajectories in mental health

- to advance understanding of mental health needs and in the transitions age between childhood and adulthood

- to identify emerging mental health needs since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in the continuum between childhood and adulthood

- to identify strategies at the primary care, social, policy, and public levels, that can help mental health prevention to succeed.

Keywords: Mental health promotion and prevention; early intervention; staging of mental disorders; risk and protective factors; neurodevelopmental trajectories; primary and social care; health policies