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Effective public mental health policy and practice call for a trained workforce that is competent in mental health promotion and delivering on improved mental health. Systematic information on what competencies are needed for mental health promotion practice in the health sector is lacking. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these competencies for mental health promotion.

A Delphi survey was carried out to facilitate a consensus-building process on development of the competencies. Professionals (n=32) working in mental health and mental health promotion took part in the survey. The experts were asked their professional views on the needed competencies as well as to rank the importance of the competencies. Two questionnaire rounds were carried out in order to reach consensus.

In total, 16 main competencies and 56 subcompetencies were identified through the Delphi survey. The competencies were divided into three category domains: theoretical knowledge, practical skills and attitudes and values each category representing an important aspect of mental health promotion competency.

The competencies provide a resource for workforce development, as they illustrate what theoretical knowledge, practical skills and attitudes and values are required. They provide an instrument to enhance education and training programmes in mental health promotion contributing to a more skilled workforce and improved quality of practice as well.

A strong consensus was reached within the participating experts, them viewing all competencies as important. The identified competencies highlight the great variety of different competencies and competency areas that are needed for effective mental health promotion practice in the health sector.

This paper presents the findings of an investigation into a mental health promotion initiative in young offender institutions across England. The study involved a survey of staff attitudes towards mental health promotion, and surveyed practice run by these staff. Analysis of staff descriptions of mental health promotion revealed a degree of confusion and a lack of clarity over the definition of mental health and mental health promotion. The concept of a mental health promotion initiative which aimed to improve the well‐being of the general inmate and staff population was not a shared vision and not part of the core work of either health care staff or prison officers. It is recommended that any future campaigns on mental health or health promotion should have a central lead, with some flexibility to allow for the development of local initiatives, fostering local relationships and partnerships.

This paper describes the development of an evaluation framework to document the process, impact and outcomes of a community‐based mental health promotion project. This initiative, the Rural Mental Health Project, is concerned with the promotion of positive mental health in rural communities in the Republic and Northern Ireland. As a community‐based initiative, this project involves multi‐component interventions that are implemented with diverse target groups across a range of community settings. Assessing the process of programme implementation is critical in order to capture and document the realities of programme planning and implementation. The evaluation approach adopted in this project is based on a logic model research paradigm (Scheirer et al, 1995). This model gives equal emphasis to process and outcome evaluation and seeks to relate the realities of programme implementation to intended programme outcomes. Project activity is tracked prospectively in order to examine the detail of actual programme delivery and its influence on expected project outcomes. This paper outlines the model as applied in this project and explores the methodological and practical challenges in evaluating complex community interventions.

This article reports on a literature review of interventions specifically identified as emanating from a mental health promotion (as opposed to prevention) paradigm. A number of recurring debates in the field were identified, including language and terminology, defining ‘mental health’, models of mental health promotion, the use of overgeneralised concepts, values, beliefs and assumptions implicit in mental health promotion interventions, and diversity in what gets called mental health promotion and who does mental health promotion. The paper concludes by highlighting key issues critical to the future development of mental health promotion: the implications of mental health promotion being at an embryonic stage of development, the need for greater reflexivity, the need for integration, and issues concerning professional identity and practice in the mental health promotion field.

The benefits of a student-led mental health promotion intervention on World Mental Health day result in tangible learning benefits for those students. The event occurs within the students’ own university. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This case study evaluates students’ experience on a mental health promotion intervention. This intervention was to enable students to experience running a health promotion intervention and develop their health promotion skills outside of their lectures. Students were recruited who had just completed a module on health promotion. Students had to plan and organise the intervention, which included involving other organisations and facilities both external and internal to the university. The experience was evaluated through the case study using as data collection a semi-structured interview.

Results indicated that students found the experience to be beneficial in deepening their understanding of health promotion, mental health awareness and in increasing their self-esteem. Limitations of this case study are in the argument for reproducibility of results, which is affected by the small number of students who took part.

There are opportunities to develop this idea further and to broaden the availability of the initiative, enabling more students from diverse backgrounds to experience putting theory into practice.

To the best knowledge of the author, this study, although with limitations, provided a good understanding on how to develop health promotion skills within a university setting. The outcomes of this study are mainly applicable to a health studies course, educators of mental health promotion, university mental health support services and research related to this topic, especially on promoting mental health awareness and education.

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 arbitrary definition 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 are based. In response to this critique, the ten‐element map of mental health promotion and demotion is referred to as a more comprehensive, illuminating and, in the end, more philosophically sound account.

Public mental health can be described as the science, politics and art of creating a mentally healthy society. This paper discusses these three concepts with reference to the literature as the necessary components of any strategy or programme to create, promote and maintain mental well‐being at a community and population level. It goes on to describe how they were applied in a cross‐border rural mental health project in Ireland.

Mental health promotion is saturated with theoretical ambiguity and is ripe for sustained philosophical investigation. Unfortunately, most philosophical discussion in health promotion is commonplace rather than academic, and many health promotion theorists are unaware that there is a difference. In order to illustrate this intransigent problem, I discuss Glenn MacDonald's recent contribution to this journal (Vol. 1, Issue 2). In so doing I demonstrate four philosophical errors frequently made in health promotion theory, research and practice.

The implementation of mental health promotion is a core part of the role for all mental health professionals. This involves working with individuals and groups to facilitate the uptake and application of new knowledge, skills and personal attributes. Recently, an Australian intervention that included teaching nurses and educators the skills of mental health promotion was implemented and evaluated. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of the qualitative evaluation and explore specific attributes of this facilitation, which helps to clarify and articulate a hidden, and taken-for-granted practice.

A qualitative mixed-methods study was designed to evaluate the perceived skills and attributes necessary for effective facilitation of a mental health promotion program in schools.

This evaluation revealed that facilitation is more than simply allowing free-flowing discussion amongst participants. For mental health promotion to be effective, the leader needs to be able to balance content delivery with flexibility, to use interpersonal behaviors that support and empower, and be willing to see the self as always learning and growing.

Without explicit training or discussion of facilitation, it is possible that mental health professionals may slip into teaching didactically. Didactic teaching may not empower learners to articulate their own views, or internalize and demonstrate new skills. A facilitative approach is more fitting to the values of twenty-first-century health promotion. Facilitation is a skill that deserves to be taught explicitly within all mental health promotion courses, so that mental health professionals are inspired to teach in ways that are transactional, and empowering.

A facilitative approach is more fitting to the values of twenty-first-century health promotion. This study confirms that facilitation is a skill that deserves to be taught explicitly to all mental health professionals so they are inspired to implement effec"tive mental health promotion.

The promotion of public mental health is a challenging endeavour for policy actors and stakeholders. In particular, the implementation of public mental health initiatives highlighted in Standard One of the National Service Framework for Mental Health has been poor and patchy (Department of Health, 2004a). This paper attempts to illuminate the complex process of public mental health policy implementation at local level through the exploration of stakeholders' actions.An exploratory case study design was selected, focusing on one local health and social care community within inner London. A conceptual framework about policy implementation and the concept of partnership working are used to shape the analysis of the empirical findings.This paper addresses the challenges associated with the promotion of public mental health initiatives within one local NHS health and social care community. It attempts to increase the understanding and insights into public mental health policy and practice at local level from a policy implementation standpoint. Using an empirical case study of public mental health in an English locality, some of the key issues explored in this paper are about perceptions of public mental health concepts among key policy actors and also stakeholders' behaviour in Local Implementation team (LIT) partnerships. Furthermore, the authors address the issue of how local policy actors engage the local community in supporting the needs of vulnerable groups such as service users and black and minority ethnic (BME) groups.Although functional partnership are essential for the promotion of public mental health initiatives, the interdependencies of the stakeholders, competition for resources, power dynamics and the difficulty of engaging a diverse range of voices have a significant limiting effect on achieving successful policy implementation on the ground.