‘The role of primary prevention in mental health services: A review and critique’ by Alan Blair

✍ Scribed by D. Hawks

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 115 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1052-9284
• DOI: 10.1002/casp.2450020205

✦ Synopsis

To prevent is of course better than to cure-the question however is whether, even allowing for the relative ineffectiveness of many of our methods of treatment, we can yet advise a greater emphasis on prevention. Put succinctly, do we know how to prevent?

While listing the many difficulties of demonstrating the efficacy of prevention, Blair offers some examples of its successes. It will be argued in this commentary that in part we do not know how to prevent because there has been as yet too little investment in its investigation.

Whatever those of us who are submerged in the treatment of mental illness think, good mental health is prevalent. Even allowing for the fact that those presenting for treatment represent only a minority of those 'needing' treatment, the fact is that most people, most of the time, cope with the exigencies which are an inevitable