Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities

This report builds on a highly valued predecessor, the 1994 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report entitled Reducing Risks for Mental Disorders: Frontiers for Preventive Intervention Research. That report provided the basis for understanding prevention science, elucidating its then-existing research base, and contemplating where it should go in the future. This report documents that an increasing number of mental, emotional, and behavioral problems in young people are in fact preventable. The proverbial ounce of prevention will indeed be worth a pound of cure: effectively applying the evidence-based prevention interventions at hand could potentially save billions of dollars in associated costs by avoiding or tempering these disorders in many individuals. Furthermore, devoting significantly greater resources to research on even more effective prevention and promotion efforts, and then reliably implementing the findings of such research, could substantially diminish the human and economic toll.