The technological character of barriers to primary preventive activity in mental health: a framework for analysis

In recent years a number of barriers to primary prevention have been discussed in the literature: deficiencies in resources, know-how, and motivation on the part of mental health practitioners; lack of mandate; community resistance; and organizational structural problems. This paper describes the ways in which such barriers stem from the nature of primary prevention as organizational technology in mental health. Specifically, primary prevention is handicapped by the limited rationality of the technologies involved, and the sources of nonrationality in the technology of prevention come to be perceived as external barriers.