Prevention

In previous chapters we have looked at many different examples of mad or bad, exploring how people who are experiencing mental health issues or who commit criminal offences are classified and treated by formal medical and criminal justice systems. The focus of these chapters has tended to be on the treatment of people after a diagnoses or verdict, but here we turn our attention to how mental health and offending behaviour might be prevented, and to discern the synergies and contrasts between the different approaches and the prevention aspirations. In addition, we will concentrate on childhood and adolescence, in part because it is simply not possible to deal with every aspect of prevention in a single chapter, but also because it is often most effective to conduct interventions at this stage of life. However, this focus is not meant to suggest that approaches to prevention in adulthood are not worth conducting, as they have certainly proved to be effective.