(not specific medical advice or a request for specific medical advice)
For many medical conditions, there are preventative practices that one can follow in order to reduce their (actuarial) chances of getting the disease. E.g. to reduce the chances of developing heart disease, one might avoid smoking, drink a little alcohol, avoid excessive consumption of fried foods, get good exercise, etc.
Are there any techniques that have a decent acceptance that some believe reduce the chance of developing mental illness, either in yourself or for your children? E.g. adjusting a child’s diet and life patterns while they are little so as to reduce the chances that they will grow up and develop bipolar disorder or schizophrenia at age 25.
It seems that many of the leads I’ve found online are:
Right-wing sites that consider homosexuality to be a mental illness, and discuss how to make sure your child doesn’t become one by involving the same-sex parent.
Information on early detection and treatment (e.g. how to identify someone just coming down with depression and get them on antidepressants before it seriously affects their life, which is not prevention at all, just like detecting a cancerous tumor when it is small and very treatable is not cancer prevention)
The only thing I can suggest is that many elements of Cognitive Behavior Therapy can be taught to kids. These techniques can help treat some psychological problems and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that they could prevent them.
CBT often relates to changing your pattern of thinking. Instead of thinking “I’ll just die if I screw up during public speaking,” you think “I have an opportunity to really show off what I can do. And if I make a mistake, the audience will understand because they’ve all been there too.” Instead of thinking “I’m a failure and I always screw up,” you think “I’ve made some mistakes, but I’ve done some things right, too.” You’re replacing thought patterns that are negative and mostly untrue with thoughts that are more true and provide more opportunities to do something about the problem.
There’s more to it, of course. I have relatives in that field and they’d probably think I butchered the explanation and left out key parts.
Anyway, CBT seems to have a strong track record with anxiety, mood and depressive issues. I don’t know about something like schizophrenia, though.
Sadly, as we are discovering in the case of a friend… don’t get pregnant. Two kids, two severe episodes of postpartum depression/postpartum psychosis, the second involving several months of in-patient psychiatric treatment, and it seems she’s relapsing into some sort of manic phase a year later (but now refusing treatment, exhibiting symptoms of paranoia, sleeping in shelters rather than going home after work, etc).
The problem is that we have absolutely no idea what causes most mental illnesses. We try to work to combat the symptoms, and have found some drugs that tend to help, but often we only know vaguely why and they rarely work in every single case.
Mental illnesses aren’t cause by pathogens (usually); they are abnormalities in the wiring or chemical make-up of the brain. While there are categories that mental health professionals use to categorize mental illnesses, some of the categories are extremely vague and are characterized solely by symptoms. The cause of each case is going to be different, so there’s no single way to treat them, or prevent them. Many of the things others will tell you will likely be helpful, but we’re really nowhere close to being able to accurately describe why people go through some of the mental anguish that they do.
While the precise causes of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia aren’t completely understood, they are generally believed to be mostly genetic and neuro-biological. Childhood trauma can be a contributing factor for both, so to the extent that avoiding that is a preventative strategy, by all means go ahead. Substance abuse may be a contributing factor for schizophrenia, but there is some debate about causality.
Getting regular exercise may combat depression, but it will have no effect on bipolar or schizophrenia. And lots of people suffering depression get laid regularly.
Wikipedia actually has good articles on both illnesses, with lots of good references. I would suggest that as a good starting point.
With regards to depression, there are many well-documented reccomendations for avoiding it. However, there are some people for whom depression is largely a bio-chemical issue, not an environmental one. Again, there is a genetic component.
Don’t use Hash (Marihuana) in the teenage times, that is, roughly between 13 and 25 (to be on the safe side, strictly, it’s between15 and 19). The brain is being partly re-wired, and even small amounts of hash (as in the proverbial first joint) appear to increase the chance of schizophrenia later - from 1 in 1000 to 2 in 1000. Which is not much, totally, but also double the risk and easy to avoid/ postpone.
Source: Recent BBC dokumentary.
If we’re talking about problems caused externally, avoid Ticks - they often carry the bacteria for either FSME (Early summer meningtis) or borreliose, both of which look like a harmless cold at first, can damage the brain and are difficult/ impossible to treat.
Given the strong hereditary element in certain disorders, you might consider your question to be equivalent to:
“Is there a way to keep from getting beat up if you have red hair”
The answer would be something like, “Learn to recognize when a beating is developing and evade as quickly as possible.” It’s what I learned to do with bipolar disorder.