Mental Health Promotion
Mental health promotion is the ‘mental health’ component of health promotion. It is “the process of enabling people to increase control over their mental health and its determinants, and thereby improve their mental health.”
Published on 13 October 2022
Mental health promotion is the ‘mental health’ component of health promotion. It is “the process of enabling people to increase control over their mental health and its determinants, and thereby improve their mental health.”
Mental health promotion focuses on helping people to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to promote and protect their own mental wellbeing, while simultaneously working to create positive changes in our shared social environments that promote our collective mental wellbeing. It focuses on three main outcomes:
- promoting high levels of mental wellbeing
- preventing the onset of mental health conditions like depression and anxiety
- building mental health literacy to promote self-care, destigmatise mental health conditions and encourage help-seeking and help-giving.
Mental health promotion is different from, but complementary to mental healthcare. It focuses on influencing underlying root causes rather than managing specific conditions. It targets whole groups and communities and is undertaken in a range of settings such as online, the home, schools, workplaces, and neighbourhoods, rather than just through health services.