How to Promote Mental Health

If you work in health promotion, you've learned strategies for promoting various areas of health, such as nutrition, fitness and sexual health. While promoting these areas requires expertise and care, promoting mental health calls for special consideration. Rather than one step-by-step method, it requires a multipronged approach that will vary with your audiences.



Define mental health as emotional well-being, rather than considering mental health to be the absence of mental illness. Because mental illness is often stigmatized, you'll also need to consider the feelings of those with mental illness when developing promotional materials. You'll also need to strike a balance between developing materials that promote good mental health and materials that inform your audience about mental illness.

Instructions

Preparation

• 1

  Target your interventions to a specific audience. If your audience is college students, research which disorders are most common in that population. If your audience is senior citizens, determine what coping strategies have been proven to be most beneficial in older adults.

• 2

  Reach your population at school or at work. School-based and work-based interventions have been shown to be cost-effective, according to the World Health Organization. A school-based intervention could involve educational material, contact with a person with mental illness or both.

• 3

  Create interactive programs that enhance social functioning. Programs should focus on building autonomy, optimism and self-confidence. Self-esteem is a core component of mental health promotion, according to a 2004 study published by Michal Mann in "Health Education Research." Try implementing an exercise intervention to build self-esteem and positive thinking.

• 4

  Create a screening program that will help people who do not know they have a mental illness. Ensure that the screening tool includes information about seeking treatment. Address substance abuse, a risk factor for poor mental health.

• 5

  Ask people you know who have a mental illness whether they would be willing for you to share their stories as examples. If they agree, have them sign statements detailing the level of disclosure and granting you permission to use this information in particular settings. Consult an attorney, if necessary, to help you compose the agreement's wording.

Presenting the Information

• 6

  Teach your audience about the symptoms, etiology, prevalence and treatment of each mental disorder. For instance, make sure they know that mental illnesses have a genetic basis.

• 7

  Describe ways that your target population can maintain positive mental health. Encourage regular exercise, proper nutrition and stress-management strategies. Explain how these behaviors are related to good mental health. Teach problem-solving skills and conflict resolution. Focus on enhancing skills rather than identifying deficits.

• 8

  Tell real-life stories about people with mental illness. Put a face on mental illness by letting your audience know that people with mental illness have similarities with them. Use only the stories for which you have signed permission.

• 9

  Dispel negative stereotypes about mental illness. Remind your target population that few people with mental illness are violent. Tell your audience that people with mental illness are not responsible for their condition.

• 10

  Dramatize stories about people with mental illness. Follow any skits with open discussion. Skits allow people in the audience to discuss mental health in an impersonal way. If a person in the audience is experiencing the same symptom as a character, he can refer to the character when discussing the symptom, eliminating embarrassment or shame.

• 11

  Evaluate your effort using the survey tools you created.