ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the current and future directions for universal prevention targeting unhelpful perfectionism in youth. With youth, as with adults, there is a suggestion that perfectionism can be both helpful and unhelpful. Definitions of unhelpful perfectionism have largely been formulated in the context of adult populations. Self-oriented perfectionism has been associated with clinically diagnosed anxiety and has been shown to predict poorer treatment outcome. Self-oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism have been shown to predict depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. A recent overview of school-based interventions came to the conclusion that the evidence to date supports the use of extensive, multifaceted interventions focused solely on perfectionism rather than multiple targets, to eliminate the negative impacts of perfectionism. The perfectionism intervention group also had significantly lower levels of personal standards (FMPS) at follow-up compared to the media literacy intervention group.
