This book provides an overview of a diverse array of preventive
strategies relating to mental illness, and identifies their achievements
and shortcomings. The chapters in this collection illustrate how
researchers, clinicians and policy makers drew inspiration from
divergent fields of knowledge and practice: from eugenics, genetics and
medication to mental hygiene, child guidance, social welfare, public
health and education; from risk management to radical and social
psychiatry, architectural design and environmental psychology. It
highlights the shifting patterns of biological, social and psychodynamic
models, while adopting a gender perspective and considering professional
developments as well as changing social and legal contexts, including
deinstitutionalisation and social movements. Through vigorous research,
the contributors demonstrate that preventive approaches to mental health
have a long history, and point to the conclusion that it might well be
possible to learn from such historical attempts. The book also explores
which of these approaches are worth considering in future and which are
best confined to the past. Within this context, the book aims at stoking
and informing debate and conversation about how to prevent mental
illness and improve mental health in the years to come.
Chapters 3, 10, and 12 of this book are available open access under a CC
BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com
