Principles and Practice of Social Marketing: Case study: the Act–Belong–Commit campaign promoting positive mental health
The Act–Belong–Commit community-based social marketing campaign targets individuals to engage in activities that enhance mental health. It simultaneously encourages community organisations offering such activities to promote their activities under the Act–Belong–Commit banner. The campaign provides a simple framework for mental health promotion professionals to communicate with, and gain the co-operation of, potential partners and stakeholders within and outside the health system. The campaign was developed as an upstream or primary prevention intervention. However, the campaign messages are also appropriate for at-risk individuals and groups (secondary prevention), and for people recovering from a mental illness (tertiary prevention). Hence, as it evolves the campaign is developing a number of programme components and partners for secondary and tertiary prevention. The campaign is conducted by Mentally Healthy WA, a group based within the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University in Western Australia (WA). This chapter draws on a number of publications available from the website (e.g., Donovan, James and Jalleh 2007; Donovan et al . 2003a, 2006a; Jalleh et al . 2007).
Implementing Mental Health Promotion: The Act–Belong–Commit Mentally Healthy WA Campaign in Western Australia
Mental health promotion is attracting attention as health authorities become increasingly concerned with the rise in mental illnesses. However, there is little to guide health professionals in communicating to individuals and community groups what mental health promotion – in the sense of strengthening people's mental health and mental illness prevention – is about, or to guide population-wide interventions. The Act–Belong–Commit Mentally Healthy WA campaign provides a simple framework to assist mental health promotion professionals communicate with and gain the co-operation of potential partners and stakeholders for mental health promotion programs. The campaign is based on the results of focus group research on community members' perceptions of what mental health is, and concepts of positive mental health as described by psychologists and others in the literature. Two frameworks were developed: one for targeting individuals to be proactive about their own mental health, and one targeting people in authority to be mindful about the way they deal with those in their care. The frameworks are presented as ABCs to provide a simple mnemonic of relevant concepts. The Act–Belong–Commit component described here was developed to target individuals to be proactive about their own mental health and well-being.
Promoting Children's Mental Health: The European Early Promotion Project (EEPP)
The prevalence of psychosocial disorders in children is high internationally (Bird, 1996), with rates in the UK in the region of 10-15% (Fonagy et al, 2002; Meltzer et al, 2000). Levels rise dramatically (for example to 40%), particularly in disadvantaged areas (Attride-Stirling et al, 2001; Davis et al, 2000) if one takes an approach based on problems and not on disorders. Given the serious consequences of such difficulties (including distress, impaired development and adult functioning, and costs of later services), it is worrying to find major service problems. They include lack of universal, accessible, high-quality specialist services (Kurtz et al, 1994; NHS Health Advisory Service, 1995; Audit Commission, 1999), poor co-ordination with accessible community professionals (for example health visitors and teachers), who may also lack the skills (Mitcheson & Cowley, 2003) and confidence (Fundudis, 1990; Kurtz et al, 1994) to deal with psychosocial issues. Services offer little in the way of effective parenting preparation (Henricson et al, 2001) or high-quality child care and preschool education to compensate (Boocock, 1995; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000) for the problems parents have in meeting their children’s needs. The aim of this special issue of the Journal is to describe a major project set up to address these problems by developing a promotional and preventative service in a European context, and to evaluate its effects. This introductory chapter will set the scene for the papers to follow, by considering service developments in this area and previous research that has been done on the effectiveness of prevention strategies. Focusing largely on home visiting as the main vehicle for service delivery, we will consider the outcomes of these methods, before exploring neglected questions about the effective ingredients of these strategies and the processes involved. The chapter finishes with a brief description of the origins of the European Early Promotion Project (EEPP), a design specification for the service and the theory upon which it was based.