Mental Health Promotion

The promotion of mental health involves a broad range of issues, but it includes those strategies which:

Contribute towards the prevention of mental illness

and

Promote and maintain an individual’s well-being

Mental health promotion remains the most underdeveloped area of health promotion although there is an increasing recognition that “there is no health without mental health”. Positive mental health includes self-esteem, the ability to solve problems and the ability to adapt to mental stresses. Mental health promotion can be seen as a set of activities directed at strengthening the determinants of mental health and their maintenance.

The need for positive mental health promotion is universal and relevant to all of us. It is important to get policy makers, professionals and lay people to comprehend that mental health and mental well-being are basically issues of everyday life. In so doing, the process used to promote mental health should in itself be mental health promoting. Positive mental health demands co-ordinated action by all concerned – Government, Local Authorities, health and other social and economic sectors, industry, voluntary organisations and through the various media.

Mental Health Ireland identifies the importance of developing a range of mental health strategies to increase public awareness and change public attitudes towards the understanding of mental illness and also the importance of maintaining positive mental health. Details of current mental health promotion programmes are included in the section on Projects and Activities and include Mental Health Matters, a mental health resource pack for 14-18 year olds and the National Public Speaking Project.