Abstract
The review paper focuses on mental health and illness as one of public health challenges in the 21st century. Main epidemiological data and strategies discussed on both national and European level are shortly presented.
The main emphasis is than given to overview of recent findings from disciplines such as critical psychiatry, developmental psychology, neuroscience, trauma and social studies. The current knowledge from those disciplines is still rarely included in general medicine and psychiatry, particularly in those European countries, in which a narrow biological model dominates medicine, and in which the transformation of mental health care system has not been accomplished.
However, the reviewed findings seem to provide both critical reflection of biological model in psychiatry and better understanding of the complexity of mental health/illness issues. It is argued throughout the text, that such findings inevitably call for a bio-psycho-social approach in both prevention and treatment of mental disorders.
On top of that, integrating the reviewed findings into a new framework of mental health/illness may lead to a development of more effective prevention strategies and well-functioning, multileveled mental health services.