The Obstacles and the Promise

We are enthusiastic about what thorough, widespread psychoeducation could do for society. The skills that are required for psychological health are known, and the sorts of influences that make these skills better or worse are also known. We can, and we should, envision ways of teaching all people these skills, starting from a very early age, and continuing such teaching for many years, or for a lifetime. With not only competence learning, but also much greater attention to creation and cultivation of mental-health-friendly environments, the biological vulnerabilities to psychopathology, which are also quite important, would almost certainly do significantly less damage. However, optimism about what psychoeducation could do does not translate into a prediction of what it will do. A problem is that although our technology for broadcasting stories that could be models of psychological health is unparalleled, human beings tend to focus on stories of violence and psychopathology. Another problem is that when many people get involved in the psychoeducational effort, as they must, a certain fraction will be abusive or just incompetent. Still, the job is too large to relegate only to licensed health care professionals. Psychoeducation can become a mission shared by schools, workplaces, families, religious institutions, community organizations, governments, communications media, authors, and individuals. If this mission is pursued with maximum quantity and quality of effort, the results could go beyond reduced prevalences of disorders; there could be a society where happiness and peace prevail.