Preventing Mental, Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

February 13, 2009/Alvaro Fernandez/

Stronger Effort Need­ed To Pre­vent Men­tal, Emo­tion­al, And Behav­ioral Dis­or­ders in Young peo­ple, Experts Urge (Sci­ence Daily)

- “The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should make pre­vent­ing men­tal, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral dis­or­ders and pro­mot­ing men­tal health in young peo­ple a nation­al pri­or­i­ty, says a new report from the Nation­al Research Coun­cil and Insti­tute of Medicine.”

- “Research has shown that a num­ber of pro­grams are effec­tive at pre­vent­ing these prob­lems and pro­mot­ing men­tal health, the report says. Such pro­grams could be imple­ment­ed more broad­ly, but cur­rent­ly there is no clear fed­er­al pres­ence to lead these efforts.  The White House should cre­ate an enti­ty that can coor­di­nate agency ini­tia­tives in this area, set pub­lic goals for pre­ven­tion, and pro­vide need­ed research and fund­ing to achieve them, said the com­mit­tee that wrote the report.”

- “There is a sub­stan­tial gap between what is known about pre­vent­ing men­tal, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral dis­or­ders and what is actu­al­ly being done,” said Ken­neth E. Warn­er, com­mit­tee chair and dean of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan School of Pub­lic Health.”

Full report: click Here.
Posted in

2 Comments

  1. M. A. Greenstein on February 14, 2009 at 12:44

    Alvaro, while the pol­i­tics of rais­ing pub­lic aware­ness are being debat­ed, it may be help­ful to Sharp­brain read­ers to learn about the online project start­ed by Aus­tralian Jack Heath:

    http://www.inspire.com/

    This is an online por­tal that allows teens strug­gling with psy­cho­log­i­cal and cog­ni­tive issues to get help and remain anony­mous, if nec­es­sary. (User groups pri­mar­i­ly locat­ed in Australia.)

    I had a chance to speak with Heath on a dri­ve down to the TED con­fer­ence. It’s was not clear neu­ro­science was part of the pic­ture, but med­i­ta­tion cer­tain­ly is!

    Heath spear­head­ed the project by invest­ing in the WEB as the por­tal to cre­at­ing access to infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ty! I sus­pect the same will be true for cre­at­ing “open source” com­mu­ni­ties that pro­mote devel­op­men­tal neuroscience.

    Any­one at Sharp­brains inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing a con­ver­sa­tion along these lines?

    Synap­ti­cal­ly yours,

    Dr. G.



  2. Alvaro Fernandez on February 17, 2009 at 11:37

    Hel­lo M.A., Jack and I know each oth­er via the Schwab Foun­da­tion for Social Entre­pre­neur­ship. He is doing a great job in Aus­tralia and look­ing for inno­v­a­tive ways to bring his work to the US, most­ly based (at least last time I checked) on cog­ni­tive ther­a­py techniques. 

    Thank you for men­tion­ing his very rel­e­vant work!



About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
Book in English
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.
Libro en castellano

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

Newsletter

Subscribe to our e-newsletter

* indicates required

Got the book?