Universal Intervention Approach

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The prevention of mental disorders within the public health framework has the goal of not only preventing a disorder before its onset, but also preventing relapse and the worsening of symptoms among persons who may already have mental disorders or symptoms (US HHS & SAMHSA, 2007). While each of these goals is equally important to public mental health efforts, they require different intervention approaches. The three primary intervention approaches, universal, selective, and indicative, each tackle the prevention of mental disorders among populations with varying degrees of risk. Universal intervention approaches are applied to the general population, meaning the intervention does not target participants based on individual risk (Bradshaw, …show more content…

Finally, indicated interventions primarily serve a group of individuals who already have characteristics of a common disorder but the disorder is not yet severe enough to meet official diagnosis criteria (Bradshaw et al., 2009; US HHS & SAMHSA, 2007). While each of these approaches has its strengths and weaknesses, they all serve essential roles in the designing of appropriate mental health prevention interventions. Universal approaches have multiple benefits over selective and indicated interventions. For one, since there are no risk factors that indicate participation in these interventions, participants are less likely to experience the stigma that may associated with interventions that identify participants based on potentially stigmatized risk factors or symptoms (US HHS & SAMHSA, 2007). As a result, universal interventions tend to be more widely accepted. Furthermore, universal interventions that target children have generally been found to be more cost-effective than selective and indicated interventions(US HHS & SAMHSA, 2007). …show more content…

For one, oftentimes the benefits of universal benefits are not immediate, which can decrease their appeal to funding bodies (US HHS & SAMHSA, 2007). Another disadvantage to universal approaches are their inability to address sociocultural diversity and anomalous behaviors that exist within a population which may impact the success of such interventions among individuals with unique characteristics (Cicchetti & Hinshaw, 2002). Along this note, the reality that universal interventions may be more useful for those who are already at the lowest risk is another potential shortcoming (Offord,

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