Mental Health and Substance Use

Unleashing the Power of Prevention

by Straton Mwashighadi | Jun 22, 2015 | Discussion Paper, Perspectives

  Abstract Every day across America, behavioral health problems in childhood and adolescence, from anxiety to violence, take a heavy toll on millions of lives. For decades the approach to these problems has been to treat them only after they’ve been identified—at...

A Challenge to Unleash the Power of Prevention

by Straton Mwashighadi | Jun 22, 2015 | Commentary, Perspectives

  Prevention is the best investment we can make in behavioral health—and the time to make it is now. Every day, across America, behavioral health problems in childhood and adolescence take a heavy toll on millions of lives. These problems cause deep, often...

Health Care Reform as a Vehicle for Promoting Children’s Mental and Behavioral Health

by Straton Mwashighadi | May 5, 2015 | Discussion Paper, Perspectives

  Most mental health conditions emerge in childhood and adolescence (Kessler and Wang, 2008; IOM and NRC, 2009), and many develop in the context of the same risk factors as physical disease (Mistry et al., 2012; Shonkoff et al., 2009). Similarly, many behavioral...

Physical Activity in Older People

by Straton Mwashighadi | Apr 6, 2015 | Commentary, Perspectives

  Physiological function and resiliency decline with age, even among the most robust sectors of the older adult population. The degree to which this decline is attributable to true biological aging versus aging-related changes in lifestyle factors has been the...

Closing the Loop: Why We Need to Invest—and Reinvest—in Prevention

by Rowena Gono | Sep 9, 2014 | Discussion Paper, Perspectives

  What would you say about an investment that returned 5,500 percent? If you were lucky enough to have made the investment, you’d probably look for ways to reinvest most of it to earn more of those hefty returns. From 1989 to 2008, the state of California took...