How to talk about mental health promotion

How to talk about mental health promotion is for people working to build good mental health in Ireland. In particular, people who are promoting and delivering mental health and wellbeing initiatives and services.

This guide provides practical communication tips and advice to help shift thinking, build understanding and increase support for action on mental health promotion.

Generally, when people think about mental health, they tend to think only of mental health problems. This means solutions are thought about in terms of treatment when someone is already unwell. How we can work upstream to create good mental health, and prevent mental health challenges in the first place, isn’t well understood.

People also often think about health in very individual ways. For example: I am mentally healthy or not because of how I take care of myself, how resilient I am, whether I exercise and eat well. This way of thinking makes it harder for people to see how our surroundings shape our mental health – from our homes to our neighbourhoods, to the money in our pocket.

Finally, people often feel that change isn’t possible and think that mental health problems are only something that ‘other’ people experience.

Our communications can help us overcome these ways of thinking and reduce stigma by showing how our surroundings shape our mental health, and putting solutions front and centre.