TY - JOUR T1 - Prevention of mental illness must start in childhood: growing up feeling safe and protected from harm JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - e209 LP - e210 DO - 10.3399/bjgp15X684265 VL - 65 IS - 633 AU - Jennifer Newton Y1 - 2015/04/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/65/633/e209.abstract N2 - I recently completed a review of research on mental illness in search of lessons for how it could more effectively be reduced.1 Since a similar exercise completed in 1988 for MIND,2 genetic studies have advanced considerably, while research on social factors has largely continued to confirm the key role of child maltreatment in creating vulnerability, and the importance of stressful life events in triggering or provoking an onset, with social support (particularly in its negative form) a key mediating factor. The most exciting developments arguably have been in the area of epigenetics, which have given a whole new meaning to the concept of gene–environment interaction. It seems that not only do inherited personality characteristics affect how we interpret experience — and play a role in behaviour and life circumstances (that is, making some people more liable to experience stressful events or gain social support) — but social factors, such as early child maltreatment, actually change the expression of the genome.3 This, in turn, creates a lasting susceptibility to common psychiatric disorders in the wake of adult stressful experience.It also suggests that the most effective preventive work will be that which starts as early in life as possible.4 The importance of the emotional health as well as the physical health and nutrition of the pregnant woman and new mother, and the stressfulness of her environment, may have been underestimated. It seems that above all else, the infant … ER -