Prevention in Psychiatry

Abstract

<p>Having published the monograph entitled <cite>“Psychiatric Prevention and the Family Life Cycle: Risk Reduction by Frontline Practitioners”</cite> in 1989, the Prevention Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) continues its tradition of disseminating thorough overviews of prevention in psychiatry with this issue of <cite>Psychiatric Annals</cite>. Whereas the 1989 monograph dealt with identifying and intervening on potential risks at each stage of the family system’s life cycle (ie, marriage and family formation, infancy, the toddler years, etc., through the midlife family and aging), the series of articles in this issue of <cite>Psychiatric Annals</cite> provides a survey of the recent literature on several timely prevention topics for practicing clinical psychiatrists: prevention psychiatry, suicide prevention, prodromal states and early intervention in psychosis, alcohol and drug abuse prevention, adverse childhood events as risk factors, becoming a preventionist, and a resident’s perspective on prevention in psychiatry.</p><h4>ABOUT THE GUEST EDITOR</h4><p>Michael T. Compton, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine. He also has an appointment in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University. Dr. Compton received his medical degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, Virginia, and completed his psychiatry residency, public health degree, preventive medicine residency, and community psychiatry/public health fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and treats patients at Grady Health System in downtown Atlanta.</p><p>Dr. Compton serves on the Prevention Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP), the Prevention Practice Committee of the American College of Preventive Medicine, the Core Examination Committee of the American Board of Preventive Medicine, and the Board of Trustees of the Georgia Psychiatric Physicians Association. He is co-director of the Emory University Fellowship in Community Psychiatry/Public Health.</p><p>In 2006, Dr. Compton received the William Kane Rising Star Award of the American College of Preventive Medicine and a Leader of the Future Award of the International Early Psychosis Association. He receives research support through a K23 patient-oriented research career development award from the National Institute of Mental Health. His research interests include the multifactorial determinants of the duration of untreated psychosis (DUP), associations among risk markers in patients with schizophrenia and their first-degree relatives, correlates of substance use in the early course of schizophrenia, and the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model of collaboration between law enforcement and mental health.</p>