Mental-emotional disabilities comprise an extensive list of conditions. They range from severe illness such as schizophrenia to less severe, less chronic but often acutely disabling disorders. Mental-emotional disabilities can rarely be attributed to a specific cause such as a virus, bacterium or gene, but instead develop from complex interaction of biological, physiological, psychosocial, interpersonal and environmental factors. This complexity is not unique to mental-emotional disabilities and does not make prevention impossible. Rather than an exclusive focus on a specific disease or disability, the prevention focus is more on a vulnerability- healthiness continuum.
Prevention means literally to keep something from happening.
Within the field of mental health, it means intervening in a deliberate and positive way to counteract harmful circumstances before they cause disorder or disability. The potential of preventing mental-emotional disabilities is based on public health approaches of eliminating or modifying antecedent factors and of enhancing the individual's ability to tolerate those factors. Prevention within the mental health field thus involves modifying risk factors or stressors, developing competence and ensuring support. A substantial and rapidly expanding knowledge base exists to direct efforts in the prevention of mental-emotional disabilities. Knowledge of risk factors provides impetus to prevention work by suggesting avenues of intervention.