The dual continua in mental health policy and practice: Screening and intervention for low mental wellbeing to achieve targeted prevention

We are currently seeing a dramatic decline in the mental health of children and young people. To successfully reverse this trend, we greater emphasis on promoting the wellbeing of children and young people. Low mental wellbeing is a significant predictor of future mental ill-health and it is also a distressing and disabling state that requires intervention in its own right. For these reasons we need large scale screening for low mental wellbeing, using validated measures. Encouraging young people to access interventions to boost their mental wellbeing may in fact be easier than encouraging children and young people to access interventions to treat subthreshold mental ill-health. Then we need to link young people into evidence-based interventions that promote mental wellbeing through their school, university, local community or online. This is how we can achieve an effective, low-stigma, approach to targeted prevention (i.e., selective or indicated). At a systems level, we also need to adopt a dual systems approach to mental health that aligns with the dual continua model of mental health. This requires building and then integrating a new mental health promotion system that complements our existing mental healthcare system. The dire state of youth mental health in Australia and globally is an urgent call-to-action for everyone in government, health, community, and family settings to do more to protect those in their care. Making full use of the available evidence and the tools at-hand is a logical first step.