Prevention in Mental Health: From Risk Management to Early Intervention

The book brings together into a single text the interrelated but different research efforts to translate the current evidence on risk and outcome of severe mental disorders into a preventive perspective. The book also introduces a holistic approach to prevention in mental health, by combining biological, psychological and environmental evidence that attempts to blunt the risk and reduce the number of individuals with mental health vulnerabilities who eventually progress to the manifestation of a severe mental disorder. Finally, the book wants also to highlight the possibility to overcome the single disorder-oriented preventive approach in an attempt to intercept a wider at-risk youth population and explore clinical research areas underperformed where future efforts will have to concentrate.

Mental health problems have their peak of incidence during the transition from childhood to young adulthood, interesting up to 20% adolescents. Half of those eventually developing such difficulties experience clinically relevant mental distress by the age of 14. Even more importantly, the symptomatic onset is generally anticipated by non-specific warning signs of psychosocial impairment potentially evolving in any severe mental disorder. This is of crucial importance, as almost one in two health problems contributing to the global disease burden across the 0-25 age span is a mental disorder.

The search for preventive strategies among youth has developed over the past 2-3 decades, invigorated by a rethinking of mental disorders’ ineluctable prodromal phase into a period where the trajectory of illness can be slowed down, blunted, or even halted. The paradigms for implementing preventing approaches in mental health have often developed independent of each other. This book aims at summarizing the available evidence and make a step towards a more mature vision of the potentialities of promotion and prevention in mental health.

Marco Colizzi is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Udine. He received a PhD in Neuroscience from the King’s College London where he investigated the environmental and genetic risk factors as well as the neurochemical and neurophysiological mechanisms leading to the manifestation of severe psychiatric symptoms. At the beginning of his scientific career, his work was predominantly focused on the neuropsychopharmacology and neurocognitive function of psychosis, with a special interest into the role of cannabinoids. More recently, his clinical research activity has been focusing on the implementation of psychosocial and psychopharmacological preventive strategies throughout the neurodevelopmental stages of life, with the final goal of positively modifying the course of psychiatric disorders among youth populations. His scientific work has been awarded by a number of national and international institutions.

Mirella Ruggeri is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Verona. She is also the Director of the University Hospital Institute of Psychiatry, of the South Verona Community – based Mental Health Service and of the Specialization School in Psychiatry. Due to her long-lasting expertise in psychiatry epidemiology, she has been recently appointed President of the International Federation of Psychiatry Epidemiology. Over the years, she has oriented her research activity into the risk factors increasing vulnerability for severe mental disorders, by leading multicentre trials in patients who have experienced a first episode of severe psychiatric symptoms. Furthermore, she has investigated the effect of multi-element psychosocial interventions in improving severe mental disorder outcome. Recently, she has been taking her research activity one step further, by focusing into preventive strategies that may positively change the trajectory and outcome of such disorders