What do promotion and prevention mean in mental health?

Mental health promotion involves strengthening the conditions that support mental wellbeing for everyone, such as building social emotional skills, fostering supportive relationships, and creating safe, inclusive environments at home, school, and in communities. It aims to help people thrive, not just avoid illness. 

Mental health prevention focuses on reducing the risk of mental health problems before they start. This may include addressing stress, trauma, and harmful social conditions like poverty, violence, or exclusion, especially for those most vulnerable. 

Together, promotion and prevention ensure that mental health support proactively supports people to stay well and thrive. 

Promotive and preventative mental health is crucial for several reasons:

• Empowers individuals: Promotive and preventative mental health equips adolescents and caregivers with lifelong skills to manage their own mental health, and support others. Evidence suggests that interventions focused on building skills such as emotional regulation, problem-solving, interpersonal skills, mindfulness, assertiveness and stress management help cultivate essential skills that support mental wellbeing throughout life.
• Fosters a supportive, nurturing, and caring environment: This includes actions to improve the quality of environments in homes, schools, communities and digital spaces. Building caregivers’ knowledge and skills for promoting adolescents’ mental health; strengthening caregivers’ and adolescents’ relationships; and supporting caregivers’ own mental health and wellbeing are all important interventions.
• Reduces stigma: Taking a proactive, skills-based approach helps normalize conversations around mental health.
• Is cost-effective: Investing in mental health promotion and prevention is more cost-effective than treating mental health conditions.
• Targets early adolescence—a window of opportunity for lifelong wellbeing: Between the ages of 9 and 14, the brain develops rapidly, making early adolescence a critical time for growth and learning. While challenges like risky behavior may emerge, this period offers powerful opportunities to build knowledge and skills, stay engaged in learning, strengthen relationships, and form healthy habits that support lifelong mental wellbeing.
• Has a population-level impact: Mental health conditions are a leading cause of illness and disability among adolescents, with suicide being the fourth most common cause of death among 15-19 years. Universal promotive and preventive interventions can improve mental health outcomes across entire communities or populations.

This approach recognizes mental health as fundamental to overall health, wellbeing and social functioning. Simply put, everyone needs to take care of their mental health. Mental health is essential to our overall wellbeing and is as important as physical health. When one feels mentally well, they can be productive at work or school and in other tasks, enjoy free time, and contribute actively to their communities.