Problems, Possibilities, People Power and Passion: What Mental Health Promotion is and What it is not: A Response to the Inaugural Issue
| Date | 01 February 1999 |
| Pages | 37-43 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17465729199900016 |
| Published date | 01 February 1999 |
| Author | Glenn MacDonald |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
International Journal of Mental Health Promotion VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2 • APRIL 1999 © Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Limited. 37
Introduction
Each of the three articles in the inaugural issue of this Journal takes a different
focus on the idea of mental health promotion.
In this article, I want to discuss, in a constructive way, some
of the important claims, assumptions and, in some cases,weaknesses of the
different points of view about mental health promotion being put forward. I also
want to compare these three characterisations of mental health promotion with
thattaken
in the UK by the Society of Health Education and Promotion Specialists (SHEPS)
(MacDonald & O’Hara, 1998).
Problems and possibilities
Seedhouse’s contribution (1998) is very important, I think.He seems to me to be
right about a good many things to do with mental health promotion, specifically:
■
right about his analysis of the current state of debate on mental health
promotion
■
right about his criticisms of the idea of mental health as the absence of mental
illness (see more below)
■
right about the shortcomings of the ‘mental health as well-being’ argument
(although I’m not sure he says all I would want to about the tendencyto
characterise mental health
via definitions – again, see below)
■
right to flagup thathealth promotion has limits (although
Iworry if he draws the cut-off line rather too soon)
■
right thatmental health promotion should not be a separate thing (increasingly,
mental health promotion is being seen
as at the heart of a new health promotion and public health agenda, although
maybe we needed to identify its features more rigorously in order to bring the
focus back from the reductionist and physical to the integrationist and psycho-
social)
■
right to acknowledge that practice is necessarily based more on values
(‘untestable beliefs’, p8) than on evidence.
There are, however,two worries that I have with the Seedhouse approach. First, I
think that, in common with a number of writers on the subject from Trent (1995) to
Tudor (1996) to the Health Education Authority (1997),his focus is too individualistic
and the emphasis is on what we need to do for or to the individual to promote
mental health. Even in his third box (p11), Idon’t think he goes far enough on
bringing the social into the analysis. In the SHEPS analysis, by comparison, we
argue that atleast as much focus should be put on what we need to do for or to
society to promote mental health, and I will return to this point below.
Asecond though related point can be identified when we
look athis claim thatwe must understand ‘the purpose of health work to be the
identification, and if possible removal of obstacles to worthwhile (or ‘enhancing’)
human potentials’ (p8). The problem here is that what counts as worthwhile and
Problems, Possibilities, People
Power and Passion: What Mental
Health Promotion is and What it
is not: A Response to the
Inaugural Issue
Glenn MacDonald
University of Central England
FEATURE
Three articles in the inaugural issue of this Journal discuss
the idea of mental health promotion. Here, each is
discussed in terms of claims, assumptions and, in some
cases, weaknesses such as an unreconstructed account
of mental illness prevention, the mistake of relying on an
arbitrarydefinition of mental health and problems with
relying on ‘resilience’ as a central concept. It is argued
that none of the papers pays enough attention to social
experiences and processes, cultural values and norms on
which all judgements about what promotes and demotes
mental health arebased. In response to this critique, the
ten-element map of mental health promotion and demo-
tion is referred to as a more comprehensive, illuminating
and, in the end, morephilosophically sound account.
ABSTRACT
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