Editorial: Prevention's Power: Depression Incidence Halved 15 Years After Participation in the Family Bereavement Program

Prevention can be powerful. In the current issue of this Journal, Sandler et al. report on the long-term effects of the Family Bereavement Program (FBP), an intervention designed to promote resilience among parentally bereaved youth, as assessed 15 years after receipt of the initial intervention.¹ Youth who received the FBP had half the rate of depression compared to those who received the comparison condition (13.46% vs 28.05%). This effect is as large or larger than many of our evidence-based treatments for depression, and considerably more enduring.² An additional, elegant feature of this paper is that it identifies some mechanisms by which the FBP appears to exert its preventive effects.