Professor Geertjan Overbeck Well, preventive  youth care encompasses all care for youths, aimed   at the prevention of mental health problems and  disease. And I think why it is important is that,   when you think about preventive youth care and you  think about, in part, early identification of risk   and screening efforts, and in another part, all  of our efforts to ameliorate youth mental health,   and strengthening their resilience, you see that  it is very important to do that early on in life. So, we know that once problems have developed,  they tend to maintain or worsen over time,   so prevention is our best cure in that sense,  and maybe I can try to illustrate that by   giving you an example. If you think about,  for instance, a hardened criminal who’s been   involved in a criminal career for a very  long time already, has been involved for   a very long time in a gang or another type  of criminal network, and you compare this   person to a 15-year-old adolescent who took a  wrong turn and engaged in an act of vandalism,   together with some friends, for the first time.  You already see that it might be much easier   for us to turn around this younger person towards  prosocial functioning than the hardened criminal. So, preventive youth care is all about  that. If we are successful, potentially,   in preventing risk and crime and more severe  types of psychopathology in these 15-year-olds,   potentially, we can be very successful for youth  mental health. So, prevention in the long run   and in the general population, I think, is going  to be much more successful than curation. Also,   if we can be successful in preventing early life  risks to become full-blown psychopathologies,   we are not only helping individuals, but  we are also helping society at large. Think about all the costs that we, as a  society, have to invest in keeping up,   for instance, our healthcare system, our  mental healthcare system, our hospitals,   our prisons, our social welfare and  benefits system. So, if you think about   those costs associated with the development  of severe types of psychopathology in crime,   you also come to realise that it’s very important  to engage in as much prevention as possible. We generally make the distinction  between internalising and externalising   type of problems in adolescents. So, with  internalising, I refer to problems that are,   psychologically speaking, inwardly directed.  Think about anxiety and depression problems,   for instance. And externalising  problems, they refer to behaviour   that are – that is outwardly directed.  Think about substance use, for instance,   disruptive or antisocial forms of  behaviour, or delinquency and crime. Well, our research has shown that especially  family dynamics and parenting play an important   role and later in adolescence, peer  group dynamics and peer relations   become very important. So, a recurrent  finding in our longitudinal studies,   in which we followed up youths and their families  and their peers over time, is that in childhood,   it is very helpful if parents can be warm  and sensitive in their upbringing efforts   towards their children and at the same time,  if they can be very clear and consistent and   mild in their limit setting. So, for healthy  development, children need a clear structure,   and they need a clear set of boundaries, and  they also need a safe haven. And if parents   can be able to provide that, they can do a lot to  stimulate their children’s healthy socioemotional   development and their self-regulation.  So, that’s one key finding that we have. We also see in our research that what  happens in the early interactions with   parents is actually carried forward to the peer  context. So, I sometimes say that’s a labour of   love. Children coming from warm, loving family  backgrounds, they actually grow up to build more   successful social bonds with their peers,  over time, being more satisfied with their   friendships and their romantic relationships in  emerging adulthood. And these peer relationships,   in themselves, they have a tremendously  important impact on child development,   as well. So, peers are very important  socialising agents, for better or for worse. So, in our research, for instance, we  see that negative peer group dynamics,   such as bullying, it can hurt youths to  a great extent. But at the same time,   we also see that the positive characteristics  of peer relationships, like best friendships,   friendships or romantic relationships, can also  help to buffer against the negative impact of   such peer dynamics like bullying, but it also  can help to buffer against the development of   mental health problems. So, peers are  important overall. They help to build   our resilience. They help to build our autonomy as  individuals and our own unique set of identities. That’s a complex question, because so much  is involved and I think, first and foremost,   that has to do with the type of mental  health problem we are talking about. But   at a fundamental level, I think what’s key,  and this is still missing in a lot of our   everyday practice, is that we work with  a key set of evidence-based programmes,   or programme elements, that we know work  well, that we know saw a positive effect. So,   in the Netherlands, our Dutch National Youth  Institute has developed a, sort of, a database   for effective youth interventions. What we see,  actually, in this database is that the majority,   the large majority of programmes in that  database, has never been tested for its effect. So, you can, of course, ask yourself, what  does that mean? And it may mean a number of   things. First of all, it may mean that we  are wasting a lot of taxpayers’ money by   implementing ineffective programmes that do  not really help youths. On the other hand,   it may also mean that some of  those programmes are effective,   but we do not really know how or for  whom they work well. So, in that sense,   we might be missing an opportunity to tailor  our youth care in a better way, to tailor our   youth care programmes exactly to those who need  it the most. And there’s yet another option,   and that is – and we have, like others, found  effect for this in our – or found evidence   for this in our studies, is that we may even  thwart a heterogenic or harmful effect for some. So, to give an example of this last point is,  in my lab, we’ve done a study with postdoc Maud   Hensums, on the effectiveness of antibullying  programmes, and although we see that, overall,   these programmes work very well, we also see that  some elements actually backfired in some kids. So,   for the kids who were already bullying,  when these programmes were implemented,   we found that if schoolground supervision was  made more strict, and if school conferences   were implemented, discussing the dynamics of  bullying in a whole school context with a total   group of students in the school, for these kids,  bullying actually increased rather than decreased. So, it just goes to show, really, that we  have to be really careful when implementing   youth care programmes. We do not just want  to do that without a sound evidence base,   and it’s also showing that it is very important  that when we implement our youth care,   that we always keep an eye out for monitoring our  efforts, that we are really making sure that what   we do has the effect that we expected. And also,  that we keep an eye out for situations when the   effect really isn’t the effect that we hoped  for, or even is potentially harmful for kids. Well, just like the family and the peer setting,  schools are a very important developmental context   for youths, and I always tend to think that youths  do a lot more than just studying in schools. So,   schools are places where children gain a lot  of experience about what it means to belong   to a group, to accord well with others and also,  how to deal with difficult situations, as well,   conflicts, bullying, not getting along. So, it  follows, to me, that schools could and should   take responsibility for the broader development  of youths, not only look at their academic   development, but also look at their socioemotional  development, and most schools do this. Although, of course, we know that many  Teachers feel a little overburdened,   having to take on multiple responsibilities,   having to teach and also, having to  be, sort of, a Health Psychologist,   sometimes. So, there’s practicalities  involved, and I generally advocate for the   integration of basic developmental psychology  courses in Teacher education programmes. So, now, the extent to which this can be financed  is another discussion, as is the extent to which   Teachers should be expected to take on multiple  responsibilities, or perhaps social work   professionals should be taken up in school life.  But the bottom line is that schools, you know, are   places in which youths develop, so the schools’  developmental context has to be supportive and   safe, and this requires schools also to focus more  on just the students’ academic development alone. Well, there’s many, but I think one  major challenge lies in tailoring. So,   we generally know that our programmes,  like parenting programmes, are overall,   effective in reducing outcomes  like child disruptive behaviour,   for instance. Our research clearly shows that.  At the same time, we also see that generally,   our success as Interventionists is relatively  modest, and to me, this signals there’s a great   heterogeneity in the effects that, well, in this  case, parenting intervention programmes sought. So, some parents seem to benefit much more from  these programmes from others, or certain parenting   programme elements than others. And I think a key  question is, why is that? So, one key thing that   we need to do is to develop better insight into  what works for whom. For which parents do we need   to primarily, for instance, support the effective  quality of the bond with their children? For which   parents do we need to really put a lot of effort  in, in repairing that bond? And for other parents,   the question may be much more like, how can we  support these parents with a hands-on training   on how to implement positive reinforcement  techniques, like praise or using tangible   rewards? And yet, for another group of parents,  the question may be, is a parenting programme   the most suited form of help for them, or can we  perhaps also redirect them, with their relatively   mild questions or levels of stress, to an informal  support network, or an informal help network? So, I think that is one part  of the answer, tailoring,   and another part of the answer is that  we have to overcome our weirdness at an   intervention science. And what I mean by  that is that we still know very little,   much too little, actually, about whether some of  our currently successful lines of intervention,   I mentioned parenting programmes and whole  school antibullying programmes, for instance,   can be successful or even appropriate for  non-Western, non-industrialised, lower   educational settings. So, the need for successful  prevention programmes is very high, for instance,   in poverty ridden settings across Africa, to  name one example. But as a global community,   we still need to develop and build prevention  efforts to support those communities in a   culturally sensitive, empowering way. So, we need  to still do a much better job with that, as well. I think, for me, one of the most pressing  questions I have at the moment is how we   can use the benefits of technology and digital  media use of youths to support our prevention   efforts. So, much of our attention has been  going, unfortunately, to questions like,   what are the downsides and the pitfalls  and the dangers of kids using social media? We have seen that TDM use, technology and  digital media use, holds great benefit, also,   for preventive youth care. So, potentially, it  can make our youth care much more reachable for   youths. It can also, potentially, make  it much more enjoyable and immersive,   and thus, engaging and motivating for youths.  Think about gamified intervention models,   for instance. And in this way, you know,  our preventive youth care practices can   also become much more effective, I think.  So, that’s one very important road to travel. And I also think that, as Intervention  Scientists, we really need to unlock the   potential of youth’s technology and digital  media use much better, because potentially,   when we unlock this potential, we can scale our  intervention efforts in a much better way. So,   to this end, at the University of Amsterdam,  we have also developed a research priority area   called “Youth Digitality” and we’re currently  setting up a pan-European consortium, also,   to look at the possibility of setting up a  novel online prevention paradigm for youths,   stimulating their resilience  and their healthy lifestyles.