is no health without mental healthINTRODUCTIONThe brain-mind-body-society connections in preventing avoidable disease and delaying death are fundamental in public health. They are interconnected: adverse environmental conditions reflected in deprivation and trauma leave their marks on physical and mental health. Poor mental health and physical illness are interactive, and this needs to be clearly addressed in the education of the public, providers and policy makers in the health and related sectors. In this issue of Public Health Reviews, we address some of the subjects in this complex mesh of relationships ranging from the gene structure to the rights of persons with disabilities.Mental health, defined by the World Health Organization as state of well-being in which the individual copes with the usual stresses of family and community living or as fulfillment of each person's potential1 is at the heart of public health. In practice, this means that health promotion and all other levels of prevention, research, professional education and policies should transcend the outdated separation of mental health as a closed and isolated domain. Public mental health as a component of public health, is a continuous developing field, yet there is still an absence of a range of well coordinated preventive, promotive, curative and rehabilitation services. This situation is current in many high-income countries and even more so in developing countries.The societal component of poverty and its associated deprivations, such as poor nutrition are key in community mental health, for example, to prevent damaging conditions that can occur in early life and lead to long-term consequences. Health promoters, policy makers and providers need to understand these interactions. It is not a mere doctor-patient issue, but a total of social and political issues, as has been argued by pioneers such as Rudolph Virchow over a century and a half ago, and indeed many before and following him. All of them have linked the cellular biomedical model with social medicine.2To repeat ourselves, mental health-still a neglected field in many countries of the world-is as fundamental to public health as is physical health. There are many reasons for the link: mental disorders are frequent, often cited as affecting one in four persons so that no society is immune to them; they are costly for individuals and society; and the comorbidity of physical and mental disorders affects the individual, the family, the health system and society. Health promotion in these interactive domains overlaps, and the benefits of primary prevention action are common to all. This interconnectedness is the reason that this issue of PHR is fully devoted to mental health, and attempts to deal with key aspects that constitute a small sample of a large universe of themes.SCIENCE AND MENTAL HEALTHAs PHR tradition dictates, the current issue opens with a commentary based on an interview with renowned scientist, Professor Ada Yonath, 2009, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. Her career in basic sciences is highlighted by the influence of her personal life story. Her work on the development of cellular internal structure is vital to biological aspects of physical illness, such as the interaction of antibiotics with bacterial ribosomes.3 Other work by Eric Kandel (Nobel Prize in Medicine, 2000)4 and many others more recently have demonstrated the interaction of genetic and the biology of cellular structure and function, which are increasingly identified with mental dysfunction. This provides an important realm of science in the search for more effective means of approaching mental disorders.Two guest editorials are reprinted with kind permission from the American Journal of Public Health: Perry and colleagues address the centrality of mental health in a public health agenda,5 and Power presents a public health approach to mental health promotion and mental illness prevention, and a strategy to promote individual, family, and community resilience. …