Editorial
| Date | 01 January 2000 |
| Pages | 2-3 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17465729200000001 |
| Published date | 01 January 2000 |
| Author | Michael Murray |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
2International Journal of Mental Health Promotion VOLUME 2 ISSUE 1 • FEBRUARY 2000 © Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Limited.
The shortest and best way to make your fortune
is to let people see clearly that it is their interest
to promote yours.
Jean de La Bruyere, 1645–1696
swe reached the turn of the century and embarked upon the
third millennium, I am sure that many of you, just like myself, turned
your thoughts to ‘doing it better’. The new year,and even more so the
new millennium, is an obvious time for renewed hope and optimism. It
is a time to discard the old routine and wasteful practices, the time to
take up fresh opportunities to enrich our lives and the lives of those
around us and, while ‘it must be considered that there is nothing
more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more
dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things’
(Machiavelli, 1517), each new year brings out our new aspirations and
hopes for the future.
For those who managed to succeed and achieve their New Year
resolutions the rewards can be extremely gratify ing. Take, for example,
the reformed smoker,who not only has attracted significant quality
added life years but can open all the windows whenever a faint odour
of tobacco twitches the nostrils or, even more satisfyingly, constantly
pontificate to old and young alike about the dangers of partaking of
the dreaded weed. I know that, because I do both!
But leaving humour to one side, if we can really change the order
of things and demonstrate the value(s) of effective mental health pro-
motion and
prevention programmes, we may then find that the wider community
will come to realise that it is indeed in their interest to promote the
implementation of these strategies.
Of course, to achieve this and to achieve the
desirable and necessary changes, we need to bring researchers, poli-
cy-makers and the programme
implementors together, and we might use a range of approaches
including, perhaps, the ideas of social marketing.As succinctly put by
Lefebvre and Flora (1988):
‘Social marketing is an orientation to health
promotion in which programmes are developed
to satisfy consumer needs, strategized to reach
the audience(s) in need of the programme and managed to meet
organizational objectives’,
A
while Fine (1981) emphasises the concern of social marketing with
introducing and disseminating new ideas and issues and increasing
the prevalence of
specific behaviours among target groups. Without wishing to extend
the debate unduly, social marketing is about establishing meaningful
partnerships whereby scientific knowledge is translated into mes-
sages,
products and services that will help improve the health and well-being
of people everywhere
(Lefebvre, 1995).
This year will see a major initiative to support
the idea of developing these necessary partnerships, when the World
Federation for Mental Health, in
collaboration with the Clifford Beers Foundation,
presents the Inaugural World Conference on the Promotion of Mental
Health and the Prevention of Mental and Behavioral Disorders at the
Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference theme is the
coming together of science, policy and programmes across cultures.
Of course there are numerous other examples which emphasise
the need for partnerships between the different players. For example,
the Ninth Annual European Conference on the Promotion of Mental
Health took Progress though Partnership as its theme and in so doing
offered the opportunity for delegates from across the globe to share,
discuss and disseminate ideas and develop their own links and net-
works between the scientists, policy-makers and programme man-
agers.
In this issue of the Journal we have selected four
of the presented papers: two keynote presentations and two from the
break-out sessions.
Everyone will surely appreciate the difficulty in selecting only a
few of the many papers that were
presented for inclusion in the Journal. Undoubtedly there were numer-
ous other excellent ideas and
proposals that we are not able to include. However,
in making a selection of those to include in this issue
Ihave to try and provide a variety in terms of both subject matter and
the geographical spread of the authors.
In our lead article, ‘Physical activity and mental health promotion’,
Ken Fox presents a verystrong case for the extension of exercise
from the field of physical health promotion to that of the promotion of
mental well-being in the general public. The paper highlights the
research thathas been undertaken into the effect of exercise on such
constructs as mental
EDITORIAL
Michael Murray
The Clifford Beers Foundation
To continue reading
Request your trial