Communication for Mental Health Promotion

Dear Colleagues,

As you are all aware, around the globe there are, and have been for a number of years, numerous mass and targeted media communication campaigns (and associated strategies) successfully changing beliefs, attitudes and behaviours in the areas of alcohol, tobacco, sun protection, road safety, physical activity, diet, and so on. On the other hand, in spite of the number of government and non-government reports and enquiries and political rhetoric, when it comes to positive mental health promotion, the reality is that “There’s a lot more said than done. A lot more!”

Nevertheless, a growing number of mental health promotion, mental illness and suicide prevention campaigns are emerging in the public domain, albeit most being limited in funds or geographic domain (or both). Further, many of these initiatives focus on early intervention, destigmatising mental illness and reducing risk factors, rather than adopting a salutogenic approach of building positive mental health and resilience, overall wellbeing and quality of life for individuals and communities. That is, mental health promotion aims to achieve the World Health Organization’s definition of mental health as “…a state of wellbeing in which the individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community”.

This Special Issue offers an opportunity to publish high-quality multidisciplinary research and reviews that report on the development, implementation and evaluation of mental health promotion and illness prevention campaigns, and particularly with respect to the role these campaigns’ communication strategies play alongside other campaign strategies, and how these communication strategies have contributed to overall campaign outcomes. (Note that “communication strategies” is used broadly here to include elements such as, but not only, messaging and message framing, tailoring of messages and selection of media to reach and impact specific target audiences, media selection in general, measurement of reach and impact of different media channels, etc.)

Prof. Robert J. Donovan
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Mental health promotion
• Communication
• Social marketing
• Mental illness prevention