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This editorial introduces this special section of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. The Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice (formerly the American Orthopsychiatric Association) has developed the theme for its track at the 2016 Annual Research and Policy Conference on Child, Adolescent, and Young Adult Behavioral Health. The Global Alliance, the parent organization of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, has long sought to address prevailing social conditions by treating them as problems to be solved through multilevel, contextually grounded social interventions. Indeed, throughout the organization's history, it has advocated for focusing on the effects of social determinants of health (e.g., racism, violence, poverty, oppression, war) on behavioral health and for doing so across contexts, such as the family, community, and broader social environment. In keeping with the organization's history and the current social context, the theme for the Global Alliance's track was "Changing norms, strategies, and systems to support behavioral health and social justice." This special section includes articles that build on four of the presentations and two award addresses delivered as part of the Global Alliance's track. (PsycINFO Database Record

The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA; 2010) has had tremendous influence on behavioral health in the United States (Alker & Chester, 2015). Shortly after its passage, the editors of this special section became interested in examining the provisions of the ACA related to care for mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders in children and youth and synthesizing their implications in the context of other contemporary trends in children's behavioral health promotion. We first developed a white paper with the goal of increasing our own understanding of these issues and their possible influence on the status quo of designing, implementing, financing, and evaluating behavioral health services for children and their families. From our discussions came the idea of developing a special section in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry featuring input from researchers who have been exploring these issues and who have tangible and relevant examples of "new frontiers" in building mental, emotional, and behavioral health for children and youth. The result is the current special section, the purpose of which is to highlight the importance of prevention in behavioral health and to explore examples of efforts that have used a broad public health approach to prevention and early intervention in mental, emotional, and substance use disorders in children and youth. Before introducing the seven articles in this special section, we describe in detail our foundational thinking about building mental, emotional, and behavioral health for children and youth, as expressed in our initial white paper on this topic. (PsycINFO Database Record

Although poverty is associated with a range of mental health difficulties among women in this country, mainstream mental health interventions are not sufficient to meet the complex needs of poor women. This article argues that stress, powerlessness, and social isolation should become primary targets of our interventions, as they are key mediators of the relationship between poverty and emotional distress, particularly for women. Indeed, if ways are not found to address these conditions directly, by increasing women's control, choice, and connections, the capacity to improve the emotional well-being of impoverished women will remain limited at best. This is the first of 5 articles that comprise a special section of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, called "Beyond the 50-Minute Hour: Increasing Control, Choice, and Connections in the Lives of Low-Income Women." Together, these articles explore the nature and impact of a range of innovative mental health interventions that are grounded in a deep understanding of the experience of poverty. This introduction: (a) describes briefly how mainstream approaches fail to address the poverty-related mental health needs of low-income women; (b) illuminates the role of stress, powerlessness, and social isolation in women's lives; (c) highlights the ways in which the articles included in this special section address each of these by either adapting traditional mental health practices to attend to poverty's role in participants' lives or adapting community-based, social-justice-oriented interventions to attend to participants' mental health; and (d) discusses the research and evaluation implications of expanding mental health practices to meet the needs of low-income communities.

This paper reviews the history of residential treatment, examines the central concepts that define the therapeutic modality, and shows how those concepts provide means of addressing criticisms that have been raised about it in the past and adapting residential programs to meet challenges facing them in the future.

Group care for children and adolescents is widely used as a rearing environment and sometimes used as a setting in which intensive services can be provided. This consensus statement on group care affirms that children and adolescents have the need and right to grow up in a family with at least 1 committed, stable, and loving adult caregiver. In principle, group care should never be favored over family care. Group care should be used only when it is the least detrimental alternative, when necessary therapeutic mental health services cannot be delivered in a less restrictive setting.

On September 12-13, 2008, more than 40 representatives from national professional organizations, grass roots organizations, governmental agencies, policy organizations, and advocacy movements gathered together in San Diego, California, as part of the Think Tank on Reducing Interpersonal Violence Across the Lifespan: Connecting Agendas. Working as a whole and in small groups, the think tank identified major gaps and issues facing the field of interpersonal violence prevention and began to develop a blueprint for integrating action across types of violence and types of populations, as well as integrating research, practice, and policy across the lifespan. Recognizing the need for a mechanism to facilitate communication and integrative collaboration in research, practice, and policy activities across diverse domains of interests and populations, the organizations committed to work together formed the National Partnership to Prevent Interpersonal Violence Across the Lifespan. The 2010 conference will bring together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, advocates, consumers, and funders in a series of plenary sessions, workshops, and poster sessions to present cutting-edge examples of integrative work aimed at transforming approaches to the prevention of interpersonal violence. Interpersonal violence is an intransigent problem with widespread and long-lasting direct and indirect effects. Rates of intimate partner violence (IPV), sexual assault, and childhood physical and sexual abuse around the world remain unacceptably high (CDC, 2006; see also http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc). Although the rippling effects of interpersonal violence have yet to be fully understood and documented, it is known that outcomes of violence encompass death, injury, and a wide range of physical, sexual, reproductive, and mental health problems. This special section of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry encourages support for the call to action by the National Partnership to Prevent Interpersonal Violence Across the Lifespan.

he concept of prevention has been of longT standing interest to mental health professionals. Over the years, the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry has published many noteworthy essays on prevention that have articulated its promise, its advances, and the challenges that lie ahead (Bower, 1963, 1987; Broskowski & Baker, 1974; Deschin, 1968; Eisenberg, 1962; Garmezy, 1971; Runquist & Behar, 1974). The Journal has also published many empirically based, prevention-oriented articles. In this issue, a special section is devoted to the topic of preventive intervention for children, adolescents, and families. The six articles it contains provide insight, both individually and as a set, into the current status of research in preventive intervention and illustrate many of the dominant themes and activities embodied in work at the cutting edge of the field. Prevention-related activities have a relatively short history, while prevention as a concept has had a long past. As noted by Bower (1978), in Greek mythology, Asklepius, the God of medicine and healing, emphasized the early detection and treatment of illness carried out by skilled practitioners. Asklepius’ daughter, Hygeia, had a somewhat different philosophy; her’s emphasized the promotion of positive practices and competencies as a means of maintaining and improving one’s overall health and mental health. While points of view about the merits of specific disease prevention versus health promotion still differ, many would argue that the two perspectives are complementary, and not competitive. They are surely not mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, a lively debate continues between prevention advocates (Albee, 1982; Bloom, 1981; Eisenberg, 1962) and those who see such activities as premature, given the current state of knowledge, and as a drain on precious resources that could be better spent on treatment and research to help those with serious mental illnesses (Henderson, 1975; Lamb & Zusman, 1979, 1981). The debate about prevention has touched on many professional spheres, including training of mental health professionals, organizational representation, social ethics, and issues of funding and reimbursement. What was once a sizeable gap between the rhetoric and reality of mental health prevention research has been narrowing in recent years. Although prevention researchers have yet to develop interventions that can successfully reduce the incidence of such severe mental illnesses as schizophrenia and affective disorders, the area of “prevention science” has been quietly emerging within the field of mental health over the past decade, spearheaded by collaborative efforts at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (Coie, et al., 1993; NIMH, 1996, 1998; Reiss & Price, 1996) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) (IOM 1994; Munoz, Mrazek, & Haggerty, 1996). As outlined by Kellam and Rebok (1992), Coie et al. (1993), and Beardslee in this issue, prevention science represents an amalgamation of knowledge, principles, and methods developed within the fields of epidemiology, human development, psychopathology, and education. Based on a sequence derived from public health

Although mental health problems constitute 8.1% of the global burden of disease (GBD), mental health has been largely missing from the international health agenda. The discrepancy between needs and services is likely to increase in the next millennium. Depression alone is currently the fourth leading cause of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) the world over and is projected to become the second leading cause by the year 2020. The nations of the world must make a major commitment to upgrade the quality of mental health services, including early detection and prevention of psychiatric problems in childhood and adolescence; to institute the collection of systematic data on the global burden of alcohol and drug abuse and to develop innovative treatment and preventive measures; and to provide substantial support for research on treatment effectiveness. Because hunger, deprivation, and violence affect women disproportionately, there is a pressing need for coordinated efforts to improve state gender policies (including equal educational opportunity and improved health care for women) and to interdict domestic violence. In the words of Boutros Boutros Ghali, the Secretary General of the United Nations: "Medical and social issues which are often viewed separately must be dealt with as a whole...the priority of mental health must be heightened...development policies must...protect and promote mental health."

Objective: The authors examined whether there is empirical support for the notion that medical patients are upset by being asked questions about psychiatric disorders. Method: Six hundred and one patients attending a primary care clinic completed the SCREENER—a newly developed, brief self-administered questionnaire that surveys a broad range of psychopathology. In addition, they completed a second questionnaire that assessed their attitudes toward the SCREENER. Results: We found a high level of acceptance by patients. The questions were judged easy to answer, and they rarely aroused significant negative affect. Fewer than 2 percent of the patients judged the questions difficult to answer, and fewer than 3 percent were “very much” embarrassed, upset, annoyed, or uncomfortable with the questions. Individuals with a history of psychiatric treatment and poorer current mental health reacted more unfavorably to the questionnaire. Conclusions: From the patient's perspective, it is feasible and acceptable to use self-administered questionnaires for routine screening of psychiatric problems in primary care settings.

If the American Orthopsychiatric Association is to prosper, it must follow a vision grounded in its historic concern with social justice, relevant to contemporary concerns, and pursued through the expertise of its members. Such a vision may lie in a 3-part agenda: (a) a psychologically-minded analysis of, and advocacy for, human rights: (b) attention to mental health concerns in the work of the Washington Group of international agencies; and (c) advocacy for access by disadvantaged people with mental health problems to a broad array of services and to a climate of respect.

As the mental health role of primary care physicians has been formally recognized in recent years, educational efforts have also been directed toward the development of mental health attitudes, knowledge, and skills. To assess gains in the latter area, recent literature (1974–1981) on mental health training for primary care residents was reviewed. Although shifts from the pre-1975 literature in the training objectives, content, teaching methods and setting were observed, further needs were noted. These include more systematic instruction in the diagnosis and management of mental disorder, evaluation of such training and more extensive collaboration among primary care, psychiatric, and behavioral science disciplines in the teaching of mental health content to primary care physicians.

The mental health program we are developing at the Yale School of Public Health has as its basic element a broad introduction to the concepts and principles of public health and mental health administration and is rooted in concern for community well-being. It is our belief that this combination of public health — mental health training will produce administrators for mental health, psychiatric and human resource agencies who will be able to design, implement, manage, and evaluate programs that improve mental health and help communities evaluate and structure the human services they need.

In a money-oriented society, financial deprivation tends to be part and parcel of social deprivation. This paper explores some of the implications for parents and children of life on the Aid to Dependent Children program, and develops the thesis that ADC offers a significant but little-used vantage point from which mental health professions can grasp what social deprivation really means in the lives of people.

É apresentado o programa de Saúde Mental decorrente de convênio estabelecido pela Secretaria da Saúde do Estado de São Paulo com a Universidade de São Paulo, através da Faculdade de Saúde Pública. Este convênio tem por finalidade a realização de estudos na área de Saúde Mental, tais como assistência psiquiátrica preventiva e pesquisas visando a medir transtornos mentais através de casos de óbito e na população da cidade e de cursos e atividades curriculares e extra-curriculares.

This reprinted article originally appeared in American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1981, Vol. 51, No. 3, 391-402. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2013-42918-004.) This article focuses on reflections on mental health in the United States. This accumulation of wisdom and knowledge from experts inside and outside government has for the most part been ignored or shelved over the years because of revisions, deferrals, impoundments, vetoes, threatened vetoes, reorganizations, budget cuts, inflation, and military demands. Programs such as Head Start, which have been proven successful, have been fighting for survival, and community mental health centers, which in many ways represented a bold, new approach with much creative promise, were threatened with the loss of federal funding in the early 1970s. The humanist tradition in mental health and social services is best exemplified by Pinel's unchaining of psychotic patients: Itards infinite patience in working with Victor, the wild child: and Jane Addams's extraordinary development of community programs. On an international level a recent report of the WHO European Regional Office also has called for a wide ranging, independent group that would cut across national governments and exercise influence at high political levels to insure that important mental health policies are implemented. Perhaps the day will even come when an American President will feel responsible and accountable to the nation in an annual report to Congress and the people on the progress made in health and social welfare areas in his or her administration.