Preventive Interventions for Depression: What We Can Do to Advance the Field

Collins and Dozois (2008) review the depression prevention literature to identify active components of existing programs with the goal of advancing the field. This commentary highlights some of the issues raised by Collins and Dozois as well as other areas that are crucial to the advancement of depression prevention. These include (a) reframing the debate about core intervention components, (b) designing studies with the goal of identifying putative mechanisms, (c) developing novel preventive interventions, (d) empirically studying the involvement of parents in prevention programs, and (e) investigating the effectiveness of preventive interventions when delivered by real-world clinicians.