Mental health as a public health issue

Mental health problems constitute a large and increasing part of the burden of disease worldwide.1 As such, their prevention and the provision of adequate mental health care facilities are important public health issues.1 Several papers in this issue of the European Journal of Public Health add to the evidence that is needed to support this area.2–4First, Cuijpers and co-workers provide tools to increase the effectiveness of prevention of mental disorders in the community.2Their paper tackles a problem that many public health workers meet: can we apply the evidence on the effectiveness of preventive measures from other countries to our own society? In mental health prevention, by far the majority of interventions and majority of studies on effectiveness have … * Correspondence: S.A. Reijneveld, University Medical Center Groningen, Department of Health Sciences, Groningen, The Netherlands, Email: s.a.reijneveld{at}med.umcg.nl