Mental health and wellbeing are difficult to define. As with physical aspects of health, they are more than just the absence of recognisable disease. More specifically, the existence of at least one good parent-child relationship and of affection within the family, parental supervision and authoritative discipline are associated with mental resilience in children. Promoting positive mental health in childhood is, therefore, closely bound up with the promotion of positive parenting. There have been several reviews of population-based primary prevention programmes for promoting positive mental health in children and young people aged under 19 years. Targeted school-based primary preventive programmes have been found to be effective in helping children cope with a range of adverse life events, including parental separation and divorce and bereavement. The rising prevalence of mental health problems in children and young people means that we need to give higher priority to prevention and early recognition of such problems.