Understanding Primary Prevention

Why must illness prevention and health promotion be a central part of any national plan to improve mental health services for its citizens? It is as simple as this: “Preventing an illness from occurring is inherently better than having to treat the illness after its onset” (Surgeon General, 1999, p. 62). The majority of emotional problems are not diseases that can be traced to some microorganism, chemical imbalance, or gene. As the former Surgeon General of the United States C. Evert Koop (1995, p. 760) observed, “diseases are of two types: those we develop inadvertently and those we bring upon ourselves by failure to practice preventive measures. Preventable illness makes up approximately 70% of the burden of illness and associated costs.”