This chapter summarizes lessons learned across the exemplary models presented in this book, providing a path forward in furthering prevention science and in charting a course for future directions in the specialty of prevention. A blueprint is offered for training, interdisciplinary community collaborations, program evaluation, and dissemination of evidence. Concrete steps that are necessary to foster a prevention mindset in the field of mental health are outlined. The first step is generating the “will” to reorient our psychological practice, policies, and research to a prevention focus. A second step is to position the training environment to be supportive of and to value prevention, health promotion, and social justice. A third step is to orient our healthcare systems and funding resources to include support for and to engage in prevention work. It is clear that prevention has utility in the current mental health landscape. A genuine prevention outlook is necessary to move from a reactionary approach based on illness to a proactive approach rooted in fostering strengths and wellness and aimed at averting and reducing human suffering. Ultimately, readers are invited to be leaders in translating the vision presented in this book into intentional prevention practice, research, and training.

An orientation to prevention is critical to abate the existing mental health crisis, with one in five US adults presently having a mental illness. The unmet need for mental health services is grounded in tenacious health, social, racial, and economic disparities, exacerbated by the pandemics of COVID-19 and racism. These realities present an unremitting threat to people’s lives, their physical welfare, and their psychological and social well-being. Despite a dearth of prevention training, psychologists and counselors may be best positioned to engage in prevention work. As professionals, we often feel powerless to prevent human suffering, and yet, we yearn, deep in our hearts, for a way to intervene earlier so as to prevent pain in our communities, intuitively aware that a way exists to make people’s lives easier and our work more impactful. This chapter introduces the approach of the book, which is to provide mental health professionals with the knowledge, resources, and tools to engage in “before-the-fact” intervention, to apply an ounce of prevention to the work we do, and to utilize a strength-based, culturally focused framework. In addition, this chapter provides a rationale and definition of prevention and an overview of the model prevention programs presented in this book.