Mental Health & Prevention
About 450 million people suffer from mental and behavioural disorders worldwide. One person in four (25%) will develop one or more of these disorders during her/his lifetime. Mental disorders represent not only an immense psychological, social and economic burden to society, but also increase the risk of physical illnesses. The only sustainable method for reducing the burden caused by these disorders is prevention. One third of the global burden could be prevented by modifying the evidence-based risk-behaviours leading to mental illness.
Preventive interventions work by focusing on reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors associated with mental illness. They aim at reducing incidence, prevalence, recurrence of mental disorders and the time spent with symptoms, decreasing the impact of illness in the affected persons, their families and the society.
Preventive interventions are usually divided into three categories:
(I) primary prevention – targets a whole population group with no specific risks (universal prevention), individuals or subgroups whose risk of developing a mental disorder is significantly higher than average, as evidenced by biological, psychological or social risk factors (selective prevention) or high-risk people who are identified as having minimal but detectable signs or symptoms foreshadowing mental disorder (indicated prevention);
(II) secondary prevention – seeks to lower the rate of established cases of the disorder or illness in the population (prevalence) through early detection and treatment of diagnosable diseases;
(III) tertiary prevention – includes interventions that reduce disability, enhance rehabilitation and prevent relapses and recurrances of the illness.
Scientific evidence shows that the most critical factors affecting the development of mental illness are:
- the early detection of risk symptoms, in order to prevent the development towards a structured psychopathologic status;
- the time elapsed between the first symptoms and the start of adequate treatment: a timley intervention allows to avoid a long and incomplete therapeutical treatment, a higher level of disability and more considerable social costs due to a lower degree of self-sufficiency and a longer recovery path;
- a firm opposition to social exclusion due to stigma and discrimination, which still represent in most countries the two most important obstacles towards adequate mental healthcare systems.
The fight against stigma still represents the main target in mental health promotion initiatives: a recent survey revealed that among the approximately two thirds of mentally ill people who do not seek for, or have access to, any kind of assistance, the main barrier to specialized treatments still remains the wide range of prejudices related to mental illness.
