What Prevention Researchers and Practitioners Should Know in the 21st Century

Christopher Peterson
University of Michigan

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christopher Peterson, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 3815 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104.
E-mail: chrispet@umich.edu

In an ideal world, the prevention of psychological disorders would take precedence over their treatment. Most would agree that prevention has the potential to have broader impact than individual psychotherapy, and certainly, all would agree that human suffering is better avoided than undone, no matter how effective and efficient the therapeutic intervention. So why are these truisms not more evident in the actual practice of the mental health professions (cf. Greenberg, Domitrovich, & Bumbarger, 2001; National Advisory Mental Health Council Workgroup on Mental Disorders Prevention Research, 2001)? Psychology as a field knows so much more about psychotherapy and treatment of problems than it does about prevention (Nathan & Gorman, 1998; Seligman, 1994). Undoubtedly, there are many reasons for this imbalance, but one of them may simply be that useful prevention strategies are not as articulate or codified as psychotherapeutic ones; hence, they are not taught. If they are not taught, then they are not used. All clinical and counseling psychology graduate programs require one or more courses in psychotherapy, and all require practica and internships featuring training in psychotherapy. Save for occasional exceptions, the counterparts for prevention do not exist.

The editorial staff of Prevention & Treatment hoped to correct this imbalance by creating the present special issue. We asked leading figures in the field of prevention to write articles in response to the general question, "What should prevention researchers and practitioners know for the 21st century?" These individuals have conveyed in their contributions the valuable lessons they acquired the hard way, that is, through their own pioneering efforts in prevention.

Prevention & Treatment usually features a single target article followed by a number of commentaries. We have reversed the strategy for the present issue, which contains five target articles followed by a single commentary written by two members of the next generation of prevention researchers and practitioners. We believe that the target articles pave a way—actually five ways—to the promised land of prevention and that the commentary is a thoughtful reaction written by those who will actually complete the journey.

References

Greenberg, M., Domitrovich, C., & Bumbarger, B. (2001). The prevention of mental disorders in school-aged children: Current state of the field. Prevention & Treatment, 4, Article 1. Available on the World Wide Web: http://journals.apa.org/prevention/volume4/pre0040001a.html.

Nathan, P. E., & Gorman, J. M. (1998). A guide to treatments that work. New York: Oxford University Press.

National Advisory Mental Health Council Workgroup on Mental Disorders Prevention Research. (2001). Priorities for prevention research at NIMH. Prevention & Treatment, 4, Article 17. Available on the World Wide Web: http://journals.apa.org/prevention/volume4/pre0040017a.html. (Reprint of Publication No. 98-4321, 1998, Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health)

Seligman, M. E. P. (1994). What you can change and what you can't. New York: Knopf.