Editorial
| Published date | 17 September 2018 |
| Pages | 93-94 |
| Date | 17 September 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMH-09-2018-075 |
| Author | Woody Caan |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Mental health,Public mental health |
Woody Caan
When this journal first began life, it was called the Journal of Mental Health Promotion.Itis
interesting to see Keeling and MacQuarrie in this issue find that “developing creativity”proved a
key theme in their model of mental health promotion. Imaginative, creative ways of working are a
sign of “emancipatory”health promotion, i.e., working with others to liberate minds that have
been stuck in old and helpless ruts.
This week Britain’s National Health Service celebrated 70 years since its founding during
Clement Attlee’s postwar Government. In a broadcast to mark that anniversary a past president
of the Faculty of Public Health, John Ashton (2018), explained how, in the history of UK health
planning, resources for illness prevention kept being diverted into hospital budgets. Prevention of
illness was always intended to be one function of the national service, but that function was never
fully realized nor resourced. In England since 2013, the prevention responsibility has fallen on
local government, whose resources then dwindled and dwindled. As a nation, Scotland has not
made the same mistake, and its new “public health priorities”include innovative solutions for
mental wellbeing (Christie, 2018).
Preventing or at least delaying the development of dementia in older age is one of the major
health challenges facing our world. The Alzheimer’s Society (2017) recommends exercising your
mind by activities like creative writing. In general, Jensen and Bonde (2018) have reviewed arts
interventions for mental health. The subjective effects reported were feelings of:
[…] increased self-confidence and wellbeing, being part of a community, building new social relationships,
participating in meaningful activities, creating a connection between body and mind, promoting relaxation,
fostering a sense of hope and developing new coping mechanisms and experiencing increased senseof
self-worth, motivation and aspiration and decreased level s of depression.
Richardson et al. in this issue describe a nature-based programme “30 Days Wild”.
That programme inspired participants to try many new activities, including “Artistic activities
such as sketching,writing a poem, taking photographs,making a piece of art from wild materials”.
The most cited paper in this journal has been by Burls (2007), which included people creating a
wildlife gardenand then installing personal works of artwithin it. Recently a randomised controlled
trial of a nature-based therapy from Denmark has been published (Stigsdotter et al.,2018).
Unlike the “ecotherapy”described Ambra Burls in England, the disciplined Danish version
focussed moreon structured gardening rather thanon creativity or spontaneity –but serviceusers
were expected to use the trees and shrubs planted in the garden for “reflection”.
Former Community Health Minister Paul Burstow gave an address at the HealthPlusCare
conference (27 June 2018) entitled “A Life, Not a Service: How TEC can unlock the potential of
population health”. Understanding mental illness and mental wellbeing along the lifecourse is a
powerful aid to planning mental health promotion. Knapp et al. (2011) made a powerful
economic case for mental health promotion at the time the strategy “No health without mental
health”was under development. Many benefits of investing in health promotion arise sometime
after the interventions used, as life unfolds.
There are clear lessons here for wellbeing initiatives during a long career. Healthcare
professionals need resilience to manage their occupational stress. Almost 30 years ago I
developed lectures and a support group for first-year medical undergraduates, so it is sad to
read in the latest issue of the BMJ that medical students today are not observing professional
“self-care”by their teachers “nor are they specifically learning to foster their own wellbeing”
DOI 10.1108/JPMH-09-2018-075 VOL. 17 NO. 3 2018, pp. 93-94, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1746-5729
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Editorial
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