Child maltreatment should be a priority for public mental health interventions

Excerpt

Mental health disorders are not different from other medical disorders in that they too are preventable. Unfortunately, the mounting evidence that cost-effective primary preventive mental health strategies might reduce the incidence of mental health disorders or shift expected trajectories to less debilitating outcomes has not yet translated into the investment seen in other areas of medicine [1]. Continual identification of powerful risk factors offers the prospect of a future for preventive and public heath psychiatry. Many of those factors are potentially amenable to change through preventive interventions. An evidence-based atlas of risk and protective factors for mental disorders potentially manageable through primary preventive intervention has recently been published [2]. …