Prevention and Psychotherapy: Downstream and Upstream Models and Methods

Abstract

Models of psychological interventions can be divided into two broad categories: those whose focus is the individual, often framed as psychotherapy, and those that are framed as community where the focus is an entire population. These approaches have largely developed independently and have their own theoretical models and techniques, and see themselves as distinct. The aim of this paper is to challenge this separation and to encourage psychologists who have an individual focus, in hospital or private practice, and psychologists who intervene with a community focus, to share ideas and to develop a common language so that there is continuity across both models. This will allow them to complement each other and foster synergy, improving results in both areas. A historical visit will be made highlighting the evolution of the paradigm of preventive models and their evolution, and will focus on perspectives’ interaction between individual and group psychotherapy and prevention models, in what the increase of populations’ well-being is concerned.