Achieving a better knowledge on the causes and early course of psychoses: a profitable investment for the future?

Three challenges, among the many ones that psychiatric epidemiology must face in the future, have the potential to contribute greatly to the improvement of the mental health of the population: a) to favour mental health promotion and primary and secondary prevention; b) to increase the capability of mental health services to treat mental disorders at their onset in an innovative, efficacious and non stigmatising way; c) to understand the interplay between environmental and biological factors in determining individuals' vulnerability to mental illness and its outcome.