An orientation to prevention is critical to abate the existing mental health crisis, with one in five US adults presently having a mental illness. The unmet need for mental health services is grounded in tenacious health, social, racial, and economic disparities, exacerbated by the pandemics of COVID-19 and racism. These realities present an unremitting threat to people’s lives, their physical welfare, and their psychological and social well-being. Despite a dearth of prevention training, psychologists and counselors may be best positioned to engage in prevention work. As professionals, we often feel powerless to prevent human suffering, and yet, we yearn, deep in our hearts, for a way to intervene earlier so as to prevent pain in our communities, intuitively aware that a way exists to make people’s lives easier and our work more impactful. This chapter introduces the approach of the book, which is to provide mental health professionals with the knowledge, resources, and tools to engage in “before-the-fact” intervention, to apply an ounce of prevention to the work we do, and to utilize a strength-based, culturally focused framework. In addition, this chapter provides a rationale and definition of prevention and an overview of the model prevention programs presented in this book.