Evidence So Far on Psychoeducation

In not-so-ancient times a few decades ago, some serious scholars raised doubts as to whether competences could prevent mental disorder, and as to whether societal factors could cause mental illness. At the time of this writing, the studies on these questions are so numerous as to give rise to a new type of journal article: “umbrella reviews” of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. There is abundant evidence that teaching competences can significantly affect the most prevalent disorders: depression, anxiety, insomnia, substance abuse, aggressive behavior, and relationship difficulties, and even psychotic disorders and bipolar disorder. Competence development has been fostered in settings as disparate as programs training parents to work with their preschool children, self-help groups for adults, self-administered training via Internet or by ordinary books, and importantly, programs for “social and emotional learning” in schools, including those focused on cross-age tutoring. Much modeling, practice opportunities, and reinforcement for maladaptive patterns, delivered through the mass media, are a major obstacle to be overcome. Nonetheless, the demonstration of significant effects with relatively small doses of intervention fosters a vision of what good could be done if society were to really take seriously the delivery of psychoeducation.