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There are strong links between the mental health promotion and neighbourhood renewal agendas. In this paper we describe the process we have undertaken to develop a framework for monitoring and evaluating progress achieved by a neighbourhood renewal programme in East Hull (Preston Road) against a set of indicators of positive community mental health. Through a series of face‐to‐face and paper consultations with representatives of the Preston Road regeneration programme, a range of measures were devised to support the indicators and to identify sources of data that would provide evidence of progress on each measure. The framework that has emerged (and which is still open to development) will enable us to observe trends in the indicators over time. This will inform an evaluation of the impact of the regeneration programme on the community's mental health and provide the basis for the production of a Preston Road ‘mental health status’ report.

This article briefly outlines some of the debates and discussions currently taking place in public health with regards to what ‘counts’ as evidence, as well as evidence use. This provides the context for describing a new programme of work currently being developed in Scotland by the national health improvement agency, as one of several support functions for the implementation of the Scottish Executive National Programme for Improving Mental Health and Well‐Being. This programme of work is aiming to support evidence into practice and practice into evidence in mental health improvement in Scotland.

It has been identified that mental health literacy among the public is poor, with stigmatising attitudes persisting. The public frequently encounter people experiencing mental distress in the workplace, in their families and communities, and may be ill‐equipped to provide appropriate support. Mental Health First Aid is a 12‐hour mental health awareness programme that seeks to address this. The course aims to train the wider public, and staff in both statutory and nonstatutory sectors, in the knowledge and skills needed to engage with someone experiencing mental health problems. ‘Mental Health First Aid’, first developed in Australia, has now become an international training programme, and is currently being rolled out across the UK. This paper summarises the development and existing research of the programme, and its present position in the four UK regions.

The User Employment Programme at South West London & St George's Mental Health Trust pioneered user employment in mental health trusts. Eight years on, Miles Rinaldi and colleagues review the lessons learned to date and highlight some pitfalls to avoid and useful pointers for others embarking on this course. Key to its success has been the ongoing support and involvement of senior management, listening to and learning from users, and an incremental approach to breaking down the barriers between ‘them’ and ‘us’.

With the recent release of the National Standard for Mental Health and Well-Being for Post-Secondary Students, there is increased interest to integrate research and practice for mental health services on post-secondary campuses. Participant-oriented research is a useful framework to bridge this gap. This paper aims to describe the program development and evaluation process and reports challenges and lessons learned to inform future implementation strategies for similar endeavours.

A participant-oriented research approach was used to revise and evaluate an innovative interdisciplinary resilience program, entitled Roots of Resiliency, for post-secondary students.

This case analysis used the development and evaluation of Roots of Resiliency to demonstrate some of the strategies and challenges that exist for participant-oriented research related to mental health in the post-secondary context. Collaborative relationships among the various development team members contributed to an overall positive experience. Some challenges that others who work in post-secondary mental health field may consider include the need for content expertise, the ongoing need for communication among team members and the need for an effective system to give voice to all participants.

Any mental health program has a cultural component and is best co-developed by the particular students (e.g. indigenous students) who are to be served by the program. In this regard, the co-design and shared development and evaluation of the current mental health program is an example that can be emulated in other programs within the post-secondary context.

The purpose of this study was to describe programs that aim at programs to divert people with a mental condition from the criminal justice system to mental health services are being initiated, but reporting is limited and fragmented. This study described programs that aim at diverting persons with mental health conditions out of criminal justice systems to community mental health services, with the intention to inform research and practice.

A scoping review was used to map and synthesise diversion programs. Ten online data bases were searched. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews was used to direct the selection of sources. Research and evaluation publications and grey literature published from 2010 to 2021 in English language were included.

Eight distinct diversion programs were identified across 24 countries or territories covering five phases of the criminal justice process. Diversion programs included crisis intervention teams, the electronic linkage system, mobile crisis units, the criminal justice liaison program, problem-solving courts, the abstinence-based program, the community equivalence program and the forensic assertive community treatment program. Although distinct programs have the potential to form a system of diversion across the continuum of the criminal justice process, only two territories moved in that direction. Diversion programs reported overwhelmingly originated from high-income countries.

Stigma that labels people with mental health conditions as violent and dangerous need to be addressed. It is important to place diversion systems on national policy agendas and advocate for evidence-based interventions.

The study provides a blueprint on diversion systems to set a research agenda and develop a road map, tailored towards local contexts.

This paper reports on the implementation and evaluation of the JOBS programme in Ireland. This is a training intervention to promote re‐employment and improve mental health among unemployed people that was implemented on a pilot basis in the border region of the Republic and Northern Ireland. Programme participants were unemployed people recruited from local training and employment offices and health agencies. The evaluation indicated that the programme was implemented successfully and led to improved psychological and re‐employment outcomes for the intervention group, lasting up to 12 months post‐intervention. This paper reflects on the implementation issues that arose in adapting an international evidence‐based programme to the local setting and considers the implications of the evaluation findings for the roll out of the programme on a larger scale.

This paper is about a single case study of a three-year BSc Mental Health Nursing degree programme based at a London University. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the extent to which the programme sufficiently addresses the ten quality criteria developed by the “PROMISE” (2009) Mental Health Promotion Project. PROMISE (2009) is a European public health project funded by the European Commission and was conducted from 2009 to 2012. Its aim was the European-wide development of criteria and training guidelines in mental health promotion and recommended these should be integrated into the professional training curricula of nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers.

A content analysis method (Bryman, 2012) was used for this case study. This method allowed for a line-by-line scrutiny of the contents of the curriculum for evidence of the ten PROMISE quality criteria for mental health promotion (PROMISE project; http://promise-mental-health.com/training-guidelines.html).

The findings revealed that the PROMISE (2009) project was not one of the four key documents stated as forming the basis for the design of the curriculum content. However, the study found evidence of the curriculum addressing the first PROMISE criterion of embracing the principles of mental health promotion in seven of the 14 modules (50 per cent) in the programme. In the first year of the programme five of the ten PROMISE quality criteria were embedded in two of the four modules. In year 2, quality criteria 1, 4 and 7 were addressed in the course content of four of the five modules (see Table I). In the final year of the programme PROMISE quality criteria 1, 2, 4 and 8 were embedded in the syllabus and assessment strategy in two out of the five final year modules. It was also found that quality criteria 2 and 9 were not included in any of the modules in the programme.

This is a case study based on the content analysis of a single curriculum document in a London University. It is therefore not possible to make wide generalisation of its findings across the countries involved in the EU Promise project. However, it could be argued that it is possible to find a number of the key findings present in other UK University programmes that may be similar in structure to that selected for this study. The other limitation to this content analysis is that the evaluation process did not include accounts of the students’ experience on the programme. This could have contributed significantly to the outcome of the evaluation exercise. Although the methodology used is simple, practical and relatively sound, it is not necessarily rigorous in terms of quantitative research methodology but arguably an acceptable contribution to the spectrum within qualitative research paradigm.

The emergence of the “PROMISE” criteria especially on a European-wide basis puts emphasis on the importance of mental health promotion in the training of health care professionals. This is expected to be achieved by the training institutions in the European Union. In the UK, this notion is well embraced in various health policy documents (e.g. “No Health Without Mental Health” DH 2011). In the case of the programme examined at one London University, work is required to ensure that a pervasive incorporation of mental health promotion strategies in the curriculum in order to help the students to become better equipped to understand and effectively apply the mental health promotion criteria in their work upon qualification.

This is one of the first papers to address the “PROMISE” project and the issue of incorporating mental health promotion criteria in a pre-registration mental health pathway training programme in a university in the UK.

Carers of people with mental health problems present with high levels of burden, poor mental well-being and feelings of disempowerment by mental health services. The purpose of this paper is to establish whether providing a psychoeducation skill programme for carers would lead to an improvement of mental well-being, reduce the levels of burden that carers sometimes feel while caring for someone with mental illness and also to increase empowerment. This paper provides a service evaluation study of an innovative carer-led psychoeducational intervention that was undertaken.

This programme was initiated and led by a carer who had experienced a lack of service provision to support carers and families in understanding and caring for a relative with severe and enduring mental health diagnoses. A model of co-production was adopted with the carer who led this initiative working closely with an occupational therapist and consultant psychologist in its development and delivery. Data were collected to measure the impact of the training at five different time points. The measures employed to measure outcomes were the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale, the Burden Assessment Scale and Family Empowerment Scale.

Results indicated improved well-being, reduced burden and increased family empowerment in carers who completed this peer-led carer initiative psychoeducational programme.

This service evaluation study was conducted in a single site and in the site in which it was developed. The carer consultant who led this evaluation and development of the intervention was also the peer worker who delivered the interventions. Hence, the authors are unable to ascertain if the results reported are unique to the individual peer worker. The transferability of this programme and generalisability of the result should therefore be treated with caution and further replication of this model and research is required. This would be beneficial to be conducted in an alternative site from where it was developed, delivered by different facilitators and include a control group.

The evidence from this study indicates that carers are able and willing to attend a group psychoeducational programme. A high number of referrals to the programme in a relatively short timeframe indicates that there is significant demand for such a service. The implementation of the programme is relatively straightforward. The key challenges for practical implementation are to have the right carer to lead and deliver the programme and the right support system in place for them (financial and supervision). Co-production also is not without challenges, the peer worker and occupational staff need to ensure that mutually valued and respected working relationship should develop.

This is the first evaluation of the impact of a carer-led psychoeducation intervention for carers of people with mental health difficulties in secondary mental health services.

This paper aims to inform the development of policies and programmes to support children and young people's emotional wellbeing and mental health. It seeks to bring together findings both from recent systematic reviews, and from individual evaluation studies which have adopted a relatively rigorous methodology but whose findings have not to date been included in such analyses. Research undertaken in England is to be prioritised, to complement an existing evidence base comprised largely of findings from US‐based research.

Using five key search strategies, studies were categorised into three main categories – “demonstrably effective approaches”, “promising approaches” and “approaches for which there is little or no supporting evidence” – according to robustness of evidence. Overall, 171 potentially relevant studies were identified, with 20 of these being robust enough for inclusion in the final review.

In schools, sustained broad‐based mental health promotion programmes combined with more targeted behavioural and cognitive‐behavioural therapy (CBT) for those children with identifiable emotional wellbeing and mental health needs, offer evidence of a demonstrably effective approach. Early and brief intervention programmes which reduce waiting times for services appear promising approaches and seem to reduce the number of sessions a family require. There is a reasonably strong evidence base to support targeted work with both parents and children.

By providing a detailed description of the successful initiatives reviewed, this paper should help policy‐makers and practitioners to develop their work.

By complementing the relatively narrow evidence base offered by systematic reviews, this more broadly based review offers policy‐makers and practitioners in England an up‐to‐date, context‐relevant guide for programme development within this field.