Mariner A S
Psychiatry. 1980 May;43(2):95-105.
It has been said that medicine is the only profession which seeks to "put itself out of business"--that is, which has as its highest goal the prevention of those conditions for which the treatment is its stock in trade. There can be no serious argument with this preventive ideal: the conditions on which health practitioners focus their professional attention are, with the sole exceptions of pregnancy and childbirth, theoretically unnecessary and--apart from the issue of "secondary gain"--distinctly disadvantageous to those who develop them. This statement is as true of conditions which bring people to the offices of mental health practitioners as it is of conditions which bring them to physicians. It is my purpose in this paper to examine the concept of prevention as it applies to mental and emotional disorders and to assess the current state of allegedly preventive professional activities.
有人说医学是唯一试图“让自己不再营业”的职业——也就是说，医学以预防那些它所擅长治疗的病症为最高目标。对于这种预防理念，不会有什么严重的争议：除了怀孕和分娩这两个唯一的例外，健康从业者专业关注的病症在理论上是不必要的，而且——除了“继发性获益”问题——对患上这些病症的人明显不利。这一说法对于那些让人们去看心理健康从业者的病症，以及那些让人们去看医生的病症同样适用。我写这篇论文的目的是审视预防这一概念在精神和情绪障碍方面的应用，并评估所谓预防性专业活动的当前状况。
