Reducing Mental Stress in Young People: Strategies from the Ottawa Charter

Running Head: Primary Health Care
Primary Health Care
Essay
System04104
9/25/2018

Primary Health Care
1
Introduction
Ottawa charter for health promotion was the first international summit conducted by
the WHO in 1986, in Ottawa, Canada. The main agenda of this summit is to provide better
health to all people with the aim of ‘health for all’ (World Health Organisation, 2018). The
charter strained on the importance of socio-environmental strategies and tactics to achieve
better health for people. As people more conscious about their health and lifestyle that is
directly connected with their health, people adopt various health promotional habits. Now
people are looking for good physic and a healthy lifestyle by taking proper food nutrition,
avoiding the use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, focusing on self- control, and want to be
mentally and physically fit. However, stress in youth is an important health issue all over the
world. There are several reasons behind stress such as school pressure, relationship issues,
family tensions etc. Nurses can play a key role in managing such stress in the young
generation if they work according to the Ottawa charter's five strategic actions to promote
health among people. The role of nurses cannot be ignored in removing such type of mental
illness, which is destroying the lives of our younger generation (Linsley, Kane, & Owen,
2011).
Stress in Young People
Stress in youth is one of the major concerns all over the world. It has been observed
that youth normally from their school days bearing so much pressure in their mind regarding
their career, life, or even they suffered from family problems. To reduce stress in youth
nurses can play an important role by guiding the patients in their work. However, apart from
this the problem, mental stress is a major problem for the society when we consider our
younger generation (Lee, 2015). There are many causes of mental stress in young people such
as career, study, result, family tension, relationships with friends or peers, love, and
affections etc. However, Stress may be in form of both ‘good stress' and ‘bad stress.' Good
stress motivates and energize our feelings to do something better, but bad stress adversely
affect our ability to perform or work and our coping mechanism are overwhelmed by the
stress (Rumbold, Fletcher, & Daniels, 2012). Here we talk about bad stress that causes
problems for youngsters and especially causes several mental disorders, which affect both
mental and physical health of a young people.

Primary Health Care
2
5 Strategies of Ottawa Charter Plan to Control Stress in Young People
The Ottawa charter plan describes the five-action plan that can be used by a nurse to
reduce mental health in young people. The Ottawa health promotion charter plan focuses on
health promotion as well as focus on mental illness (McMurray & Clendon, 2015). Nurses
can use these five-action plans, which are as follow to reduce the stress in the young
generation:
1. Build Healthy Public policy
The main objective of the Ottawa charter is to develop a policy across all the sectors
that can positively or negatively affect the mental health of young peoples or causes stress in
their mind. The role of parents and school/college teachers can play an important role in
reducing the stress in youngsters. Apart from this, a nurse can also play an important role to
reduce the stress of young people by working in collaboration with teacher and parents
(Flaschberger, Nitsch, & Waldherr, 2012). A good public policy of government also prevents
the mental stress of younger people by implementing an effective stress management
program in schools and colleges. The governments should focus on making compulsory for
every schools and college to schedule various stress management programs to handle the
stress and educate the young generation about how they can control their stress by staying
mentally fit. Nurses can play an important role in implementing such programs and can act as
a mediator between parents and teachers to examine the health status of youngsters. Nurses
can play a key role in persuading youngsters, his/her families, and the society on behalf of
their clients that how they can avoid mental stress and can promote effective health policy
(Drewitz-Chesney, 2012).
2. Create Supportive Environments
An effective stress management program introduces by the government in all schools,
colleges, and universities can help to reduce the mental stress of young people. Stress not
only affect the health of a youngster rather it also causes problems like the use of alcohol,
tobacco products, injuries, road accidents because of rash driving, suicide attempts etc. A
healthy public policy related to stress management assists in creating a supportive healthy
environment that ensures a healthy, enjoyable, safe, secure, and stress-free life to young
generations (Kobau, Seligman, Peterson, Diener, Zack, Chapman, & Thompson, 2011).
Mental stress sometimes causes suicide attempts in youngsters. According to a research, it
has been found that most of the young people who did not able to face mental toughness and