The Prevention of Depression: Research and Practice

In the early 1990s, as medical costs skyrocketed and health issues inspired heated national debate, preventive health care received increased attention and emphasis. In the area of mental health, however, the subject of effective prevention remained controversial and generally neglected. The National Institutes of Mental Health and the Institute of Medicine conducted systematic reviews of the state of prevention science in the mental health field. Originally published in 1993 contributing to this growing attention and offering the most comprehensive summary to date of this new area of study, The Prevention of Depression presents and evaluates the current research on efforts to prevent what many still considered to be the "inevitable suffering" that is associated with depressive disorders. Ricardo Munoz and Yu-Wen Ying bring together the latest information about depression and review methods of evaluating medical and psychological intervention at the time. Chapters are organized in five sections: an introduction to key concepts; an explanation of the steps to be followed in conducting research on preventive interventions; a report on the authors’ work with the San Francisco Depression Prevention Research Project; discussion of the implications of such research and the goals of the prevention field; and general comments and recommendations directed to mental health professionals. The authors conclude with a call for well-designed prevention programmes to reduce the human suffering associated with depression. Today it can be read in its historical context.

Ricardo F. Muñoz, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Palo Alto University. His B.A. is from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. Muñoz has served on three U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committees on prevention of mental disorders. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and was inducted as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science “for distinguished contributions towards the prevention of major depression and the development of Internet interventions to improve mental health worldwide.”

Yu-Wen Ying is professor emerita at the School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley. She received her B.A. in psychology and German literature from Barnard College, Columbia University, and her doctorate in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on Asian American mental health, and examines the psychological challenges of immigrants and refugees, acculturation, and culturally-competent prevention and treatment. She developed a community-based intervention, Strengthening Intergenerational/Intercultural Ties in Immigrant Familes (SITIF) that aims to ameliorate intergenerational/intercultural conflict. SITIF has been translated into Chinese, Spanish, and Korean. Dr. Ying also considers the relationship between spirituality and social work.