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Letter to Editor

A Vision for Preventative Mental Healthcare

Barnabas J Gilbert^1*, Anne Stevenson², William R Beardslee³

¹Kennedy Scholar, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115, USA

²Program Director, Massachusetts General Hospital, The Chester M. Pierce, MD Division of Global Psychiatry, 25 Staniford St,2nd Fl, Boston, MA 02114, USA

³Director, Baer Prevention Initiatives; Chairman Emeritus, Gardner/Monks Professor of Child Psychiatry, Boston Children's Hospital, 21 Autumn St, Boston, MA 02215, USA

*Corresponding Author:

E-mail: bgilbert@g.harvard.edu

The importance of preventative medicine has been firmly established for decades, most notably in addressing risk factors for cardiovascular disease. However, in the field of mental healthcare, the prevention agenda has received insufficient attention. One of the principal reasons for this, besides the global funding deficit for mental health (WHO, 2011), is that mental disorders have complex etiology. Within this biopsychosocial framework, understanding of both the molecular biology of neuropsychiatric disorders and deep-rooted economic and social risk factors (e.g. poverty, unemployment, and abuse) remains limited. Presently, few evidence-based interventions are scalable at the population level