Integrating Mental Health Promotion and General Health Promotion Strategies

Abstract

This paper identifies seven points in favour of integrating mental health promotion and general health promotion strategies: mental, physical and social aspects of health are inextricably inter‐linked; mental health is all too easily overlooked in thought and deed; life circumstances affect mental, social and physical health; mental, social and physical health have intertwined and shared roots; we need concerted action on these intertwined and shared roots; even topic‐specific action needs to be co‐ordinated and the promotion of mental health is a foundation for the promotion of general health. Attention is then focused on how such integration can be achieved, with reference to the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and the ‘arenas’ approach to programmes. The paper concludes by widening out the notion of integration to that of health promotion as an integral part of our collective way of life, advocating the idea of ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body in a healthy society’.