prevention in psychiatry – MGH Center of Excellence for Psychosocial and Systemic Research

“Subclinical” Psychotic Symptoms in Adolescents: What Do They Mean?

Mental health disorders such as ADHD, depression, and anxiety are routinely screened for in pediatric practices (1), so that children and adolescents who may have these conditions receive the help they need as soon as possible. However, psychotic symptoms that are “subclinical” – that are not severe enough to be considered a true psychotic symptom but are similar in content to a psychotic symptom—are not typically assessed by pediatricians…

Risk Factors for Serious Mental Illness: Not Just “What,” but “When.”

As with most medical illnesses, risk for mental health problems depends both on things we can control, and things we cannot. Primary care doctors tell us that our risk for having a heart attack is increased if we are older, or if we have a family history of heart problems – but also if we are overweight, smoke…

Prevention in Psychiatry: Why Now?

Advances in the prevention of medical illnesses have transformed the human experience and lengthened the human life span by several decades during the past two centuries (1). Examples of these advances include modern sanitation and clean water initiatives, early childhood and adult vaccines, antibiotics, and more recently, the range of clinical tools used for the early detection and prevention of heart disease and many types of cancer (2).

Psychiatry, however, has lagged behind other fields of medicine in the domain of prevention, despite the fact that psychiatric disorders are extremely common…