Using social support to protect and promote health.

This article begins with an explanation of social support's preventive functions as a resource for averting and resisting stress and as a general contributor to health and morale. Next, it presents a variety of emergent interventions involving the mobilization and augmentation of social support, one set classified as health protection (secondary prevention) approaches and the other as health enhancement (primary prevention) approaches. The article concludes with suggestions for future research aimed to improve the conduct and impact of these interventions.