PE4S160: Promoting Health - Mental Health Promotional Plan in Qatar

This report presents a detailed promotional plan for mental health in Qatar, focusing on the young and adult population. It identifies increasing mental health problems, particularly anxiety and depression, and highlights the role of social stigma and lack of awareness. The plan outlines short-term and long-term strategies, including direct participation programs, awareness campaigns, and social media marketing, with the aim of raising awareness, improving mental health services, and reducing the prevalence of mental illness. The plan's design includes specific objectives, target groups, settings, methods, and underpinning theories, such as the psychological well-being of workers and the impact of self-image. It also details resource requirements and a budget, along with plans for workforce development and policy reform. The report emphasizes the importance of evaluation to assess the plan's effectiveness and the need for a collaborative approach involving community members and workplaces.

Running head: PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

1PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
The aim of this report is to provide a detailed promotional plan for an area of mental
health in the State of Qatar. To achieve that a problem area in the mental health sector in
Qatar has been identified for this promotional plan. A promotional plan will be delivered
accordingly and identification of the fore mentioned mental health problem, its description,
and solution, designing and planning of the promotional plan and evaluation of the said
promotional plan and expected outcomes will be discussed in detailed in the following
sections.
Identification of problem, description, and solution:
In the previous assessment it has been established that the mental health has become a
significant global burden on the world’s global health care sector. It has also increased the
financial burden on the health care sector. In the today’s world, almost one out of three
people have suffered some kind of mental disorder at any point of their life and the most
common mental disorders are anxiety and depression (Vigo, Thornicroft and Atun 2016).
Qatar is no exception to this problem and recent studies have shown that the mental health
problems have been progressively increasing in the State of Qatar. The state of Qatar has
taken few steps to counter the scenario to provide better mental health care support to its
citizens. The state of Qatar has legalized a new bill regarding the mental health in recent
years (Bener et al. 2015). It has been found that almost 18 per cent people in the age bracket
of 18 to 65 year old have been suffering from anxiety or depression (Phs.moph.gov.qa 2019).
It has been found out that the lack of awareness and ignorance is one of the key reason behind
this high prevalence and incidence rate. Another major reason is social stigma and peer
pressure. Most of the social stigma are incorrect and based on false evidence or without any
evidence at all. Therefore, there is an urgent need for health promotion among the people in
Qatar as early detection and awareness regarding mental health can help to avoid mental
illness. Young and adult people in the State of Qatar are the primary sufferer of the mental

2PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
illness like depression and anxiety. Henceforth, this mental health promotion plan will be
targeted to the young and adult population of the State of Qatar and the identified problem for
this article is mental illness amongst the young and adult population in the State of Qatar.
As mentioned in the above paragraph, young and adult people in the State of Qatar is
contributes to the major portion of the mental illness patient in the State of Qatar. Current
lifestyle and increasing demand for success has put too much pressure among the young and
adult people in the State of Qatar. Most of them are unaware that they are suffering from the
mental disorder. According to the Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Mental Health
Services, almost 10 to 15 per cent people are left untreated who are suffering from mental
disorder like depression (Hamad.qa 2019). Additionally, young and adult people who are
suffering from mental disorders are unwilling to seek medical assistance due to the social
stigma and peer pressure. This adds to the pile of mental problems already present in the
State of Qatar. Social stigma can only be eradicated through awareness program and people
will be aware that it is a legitimate health disorder and there is no shame in it to acknowledge
and getting treated for mental disorders (Zolezzi et al. 2018). Furthermore, a high number of
migrant worker have come to the State of Qatar every year for work. It has also been noted
that high number of individuals amongst them suffers from mental health. Due to financial
conditioning they are not able to get treated for mental disorder and most of them are not
even aware of the presence of mental disorder (Bener 2017). Therefore, a proper and
adequate promotional plan will be helpful to them to gather information related to the mental
disorder which might prevent them from succumbing in to mental disorder like anxiety and
depression and even if they do, they will be aware that treatment available for mental
disorders like this. Hence, to tackle this progressively increasing mental illness among young
and adult populace in the State of Qatar, a mental health promotional plan will be planned to

3PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
reduce the prevalence, incidence, and casualty of mental illness targeted to the young and
adult people in the State of Qatar.
To promote this health plan successfully, this promotional plan will be conducted in
two phase namely short term and long term phase. Short term part of this promotional plan
will be completed within first month and the long term promotional plan will be conducted
for six months. Under short term promotional plan, the activities like direct participation
programs, awareness program, social marketing and communication and community
strengthening whereas under long term promotional plan workforce development, policy and
legislative reform and monitoring, research and evaluation will be conducted. In case of
direct participation programs, activities like screening camp, medical camp, and seminar will
be conducted (Who.int 2019). Community strengthening will be conducted by collaboratively
organising these fore mentioned activities with the help community as well as to start a new
promotional campaign in the social medial. The long term will be rolled out for the first six
months and the continuation of this promotional plan will be depended on evaluation at the
end of the six months.
Design and planning of the promotional plan:
In this section, detailed plan design of this mental health promotional plan will be
provided. In order achieve that detail description of the aim, objectives, target group, settings
for this target group, promotional method, underpinning theory, resources required, time
frame and budget plan of this promotional plan will be provided in the below sections.
Aim and objectives:
The aim of this mental health promotional plan is to raise awareness amongst young-
adult populace in regards to mental illness and health, provide better mental health care

4PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
service to these individuals as well as to reduce the prevalence and incidence of mental
illness.
To achieve the above mentioned aim, some objectives have been agreed and those objectives
are mentioned below:
1. To promote and raise awareness about mental health and illness amongst about 40 per cent
of young adult populace in the State of Qatar within the first month.
2. To provide better mental health care service to the young adult population by increasing
the mental health work force by 25 per cent within the first six months.
3. To evaluate and examine the effectiveness of this mental health promotion plan by tallying
the prevalence and incidence rate before and after the completion of six months this
promotional plan.
Target group:
The target group for this mental health promotional plan is the young and adult
populace in the State of Qatar including both native and immigrant populace. At the end of
the year 2018, the total population of the State of Qatar was 2,363,569 (Cia.gov 2019).
Amongst them, percentage of young and adult population was around 71 per cent
approximately (Cia.gov 2019). Among this 71 per cent, male population number is much
higher than the female counterpart (Cia.gov 2019). Male population number is 1,391,192 and
female population number is 279,256 and the sex ratio of the male versus female is 4.91
(Cia.gov 2019). This large gap between male and female population is due to the immigrant
workers as immigrant workers contribute to about 88 per cent of the total population (Cia.gov
2019). The median age for the male population is 34.6 years and for female population is
28.2 years (Cia.gov 2019). According to the 2014 data, the health expenditure of the State of

5PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
Qatar is 2.2 per cent of the total GDP (Cia.gov 2019). The State of Qatar has 1.96 physicians
per 1000 population and 1.2 hospital beds per 1000 population (Cia.gov 2019).
Settings:
The promotional plan will be applied in the work place and among the local
community of the workers. The objectives of this promotional plan were to reach at least 40
per cent of the young adult population. Therefore, workplace and community will be the
appropriate place as it can be used to reach large number of population at a single time.
Additionally, the young adult population are mainly working class population, so work place
promotion will be highly effective in this regard. Community is another platform which can
be used to target large number of individuals at a single time. To gain the attention of 40 per
cent young adult population will not be physically possible in one month by arranging events
and activities in work place and community halls. Therefore, social media ad campaign will
be launched at the beginning of the promotional plan along with advertisement hoarding
board mentioning the social media campaign. Popular social media platform like Facebook,
Twitter, and Instragram will be used in this regard.
Methods:
To attain the short term goals few activities will be conducted and these activities are
mental screening camp, promotional event with interactive participation, seminar and
awareness campaign, hand outs of brochure related to mental illness and health to the target
population. These event will be organised along with the local community member and
organisers and the relevant work place authority. In order to organise the event and managing
board will be created with Project manager being the head of the committee. This committee
will be responsible for the panel need to be created to achieve the long term goals. Two
separate panel will be created who will be responsible for the increase the number of work
force and evaluation of this promotional plan. Both of this panel will be liable to report back

6PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
to the project manager. Another panel with respective authority and personnel will be
responsible for creation of the policy and legislation.
Underpinning theory:
Various theories are underpinning this promotional plan with regard to mental health.
First key theory which is underpinning this promotional plan is the psychological well- being
of the workers in the work place in order to provide a positive mental health (Timms et al.
2015). This promotional plan will focus on the one of the key aspects of this theory which is
to define the healthy traits of an individual person and use this to evaluate the mental health
status of the target population of this study. Another which is presented by Goldschmidt in
1974 stated that the human beings are primarily concerned with their self- image (Donnelly
et al. 2018). Hence, this program will use this concept to portray the image that admitting or
getting treatment for mental illness will not damage their self- image. Mental illness is
perfectly normal occurrence and there is no shame in admitting and receive treatment for it.
Another theory that is underpinning this promotional plan is the theory proposed by
Mechanic in 1974 (Scheid and Wright 2017). This theory suggested that the individual might
find solution to their problem in terms of social- environmental activities. Therefore, this
mental health promotional campaign will emphasise equal stress on the social media
campaign.
Resource requirement:
Any kind of promotional plan needs physical and financial both kind of resources.
This promotional plan will require financial funding as well as manpower and transportation.
Financial funding will be require to implement various activities like organising activities,
retaining manpower, social media ad campaign, increment of work force in mental health
care sector and printing required materials like brochure. Manpower will be required to
successfully conduct all these activities. On the other hand, transportation will be required by

7PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
the manpower to successfully and efficiently implement the activities. Manpower and
transportation can be availed with the presence of funding and funding for this promotional
will be provided by the state government as Qatar government is committed to reduce and
eradicate the prevalence and incidence rate of mental illness.
Time frame of the plan:
This promotional plan will be implemented in two phases: short term phase and long
term phase. Short term phase of this promotional plan will be completed in one month
whereas long term phase of this promotional plan will be completed in six months. Detailed
time frame of this mental health promotional plan in provided in the Table 1.
Table 1: Time frame of the proposed promotional plan.
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
Research
actions Months Months Months Months Months Months
Awareness
raising
campaign
Campaign
activities
Increment of
work force
Creation policy
and framework
Social media
campaign.

8PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
Budget Plan:
To conduct this mental health promotional plan efficiently, adequately and
successfully approximately $350,000 will be required. The detailed budget plan for this
promotional plan is provided in the Table 2.
Table 2: Detailed Budget Plan for this mental health promotion plan
Advertisement Campaign Budget
Ad campaign #1 $22,700
Ad campaign #2 $27,900
Direct mailing campaign #1 $4,767
Direct mailing campaign #2 $5,019
Other $5,000
Total Advertising Budget $65,386
Awareness Campaign and Activities Budget
Transportation $2,500
Manpower $7,500
Organising Cost $10,000
Printing of brochure and other material $1,000
Other $5,000
Total Awareness Campaign and
Activities $26,000
Work force Increment and Policy
Creation Budget
Work force cost $120,000
Policy creation Cost $22,000
Manpower Cost $15,000
Other $7,000
Total Work force Increment and Policy $164,000

9PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
Creation
Web Development Budget
Creation of Website $17,706
Website handling Team $22,854
Website Running Cost $2,000
Other $1,500
Total Web Development Budget $44,060
Other Budget
Contingency Fund $50,000
Total Other Budget $50,000
Totals $349,446
Evaluation of the promotional plan and expected outcomes:
Evaluation of any promotional plan is needed to examine the promotional plan’s
effectiveness and efficiency. Hence, evaluation plan will be needed for this mental health
promotional plan as well to judge its efficacy and usefulness. The evaluation process will be
conducted based three basic parameters. These parameters are monitoring, reviewing or
evaluation, and modification. The total promotional plan will be monitored from start to end
of the plan. This plan will be monitored by the broad created to authorise this promotional
plan. This board will be headed by the project manager. This committee will monitor all the
process and activities and detailed record will be maintained to for each and every process.
This detailed record will be pass on to the next step for evaluation purpose. To evaluate this
promotional plan’s effectiveness few criteria will be used. To examine the reach of the
awareness program, a survey will be conducted with dichotomy based questionnaire in regard
to basic information about mental illness and health. This survey will be conducted among
the randomly chosen workplace and local community. These response will be analysed to
determine the reach of this promotional program among the young and adult populace in the

10PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
State of Qatar. In case of the reduction of prevalence and incidence rate of the mental illness
among young and adult populace will determined by tallying the before and after rate of the
prevalence and incidence rate. The creation of policy and strategies will be determined by
whether policy process started completed, or have not made any progress at all. The next step
of this process is modification. Based on the data collected from the evaluation step, a
committee will determine whether any modification is needed in the program plan and
strategy and efficacy of this promotional plan. This committee will give the final verdict
about the successfulness of the promotional plan and whether this mental promotional plan
will continue to run.
Similar like the program implementation strategy, the expected outcomes also will be
two steps: immediate effects and long term effects. Immediate effects will be to the young
and adult populace will be aware about the mental illness and health. Long term effects will
be improvement in infrastructure like increment of workforce and new policies regarding
mental health. The expected outcome of this promotional plan is that it will be raise
awareness among young and adult populace in the state of the Qatar and at least 30 per cent
of total young and adult populace will be reached by this program. In case of work force, at
least 20 per cent increase in work force will be attained after the completion of the
promotional plan. Creation of policies requires time and it is a lengthy process and the
expected outcome is that the creation of a new policy regarding mental will be initiated at the
time of completion of this mental health promotional plan.

11PROMOTIONAL PLAN FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN QATAR
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