Promoting Mental Health: Strategies and Interventions

This article discusses the importance of mental health and effective strategies for promoting it in communities. It covers interventions such as counselling, awareness programmes, and risk factor mapping.

Running head: HEALTH PROMOTION
HEALTH PROMOTION
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1HEALTH PROMOTION
Mental health incorporates the complete well-being of an individual in terms of
physical, emotional as well as spiritual fitness. The term ‘fitness’ and ‘well-being’ is often
associated with physical well-being, however it should be critically noted that a sound mental
health is also extremely as important as a healthy body and mental stress and emotional
turmoil are often mostly neglected (Bond et al.,2014). The promotion of mental health is an
effective and an extremely positive approach adopted by a team of clinical nurses and
medical experts to ensure achieving sound mental health for the entire targeted population of
a certain community. The awareness schemes include imparting better coping opportunities,
active living and better health goals in order to make the awareness schemes available to one
and all. The goals that can be fulfilled on incorporating successful mental health promotion
includes, better performance at work, school and home, better relationship with family
members and peers at school, improved physical health and reduced substance abuse and
participation in social evils such as violence and crimes.
General clinicians and nursing professionals can incorporate the health strategies and
aim at improving bio-psychological approaches at the local level by including better
communication and understanding at the community level. Team of clinical experts could
work together and collaborate in order to deliver community health programme projects that
would ensure mapping of the associated risk factors that lead to the cause of mental health
problems and designing interventions utilising the available resources within the community
(Slade et al.,2013). In addition to this various awareness programmes could be organized by
the nursing professionals which would proceed with the nursing staff elucidating the
importance of a sound mental health to the community people with the help of informative
posters and presentations. Every nursing home at the community level could involve a
professional counselling unit which would entertain men, women and children experiencing
mental depression to come up for a free of cost counselling session (World Health

2HEALTH PROMOTION
Organization,2014). In order to deal with the pregnancy accompanied depression, every
expecting women in the community could be recommended to the counselling cell for a
consultation. Special emphasis should be given to the working women who are frequently
subjected to house-hold mental torture in terms of family tension or toxic relationships and
professional counselling could be made available to them that in turn would promote a
healthy mental environment within the community.

3HEALTH PROMOTION
References:
Bond, G. R., Drake, R. E., McHugo, G. J., Peterson, A. E., Jones, A. M., & Williams,
J. (2014). Long-term sustainability of evidence-based practices in community mental
health agencies. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health
Services Research, 41(2), 228-236.
Slade, M., Amering, M., Farkas, M., Hamilton, B., O'Hagan, M., Panther, G., ... & Whitley,
R. (2014). Uses and abuses of recovery: implementing recovery‐oriented practices in
mental health systems. World Psychiatry, 13(1), 12-20.
World Health Organization. (2014). Social determinants of mental health. World Health
Organization.