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Mental health promotion is a relatively new, evolving and very exciting area of public health. The challenge for mental health promotion in Australia is ‘weaving its many threads’ through the various areas of mental health policy, programs and service delivery.

Training in research and evaluation skills is a frequently expressed need among health promotion practitioners. Research conducted in Scotland among health promotion specialists and their managers showed that training in research on its own would be an insufficient response. In this paper, it is argued that there is a need to develop a broader strategy which seeks to strengthen research capacity within health promotion practice settings, rather than simply offering training to improve practitioners’ research skills. This will help to improve the quality of research conducted in practice settings and contribute to building an evidence base for health promotion. A broader professional development strategy for health promotion research in Scotland is proposed which utilizes a range of learning routes and delivery mechanisms. This will be backed up by the establishment of a broad strategic research partnership which brings together practitioners, researchers and policy‐makers so as to develop a better understanding of what evaluation evidence is needed and who is contributing what.

This paper identifies seven points in favour of integrating mental health promotion and general health promotion strategies: mental, physical and social aspects of health are inextricably inter‐linked; mental health is all too easily overlooked in thought and deed; life circumstances affect mental, social and physical health; mental, social and physical health have intertwined and shared roots; we need concerted action on these intertwined and shared roots; even topic‐specific action needs to be co‐ordinated and the promotion of mental health is a foundation for the promotion of general health. Attention is then focused on how such integration can be achieved, with reference to the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and the ‘arenas’ approach to programmes. The paper concludes by widening out the notion of integration to that of health promotion as an integral part of our collective way of life, advocating the idea of ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body in a healthy society’.

Outlines the integration of “Health of the Nation” and quality assurance into a health promotion strategy and reports on its implementation in a UK Health Trust. Presents and discusses strengths and weaknesses of such a health promotion strategy.

Mental health promotion can learn from achievements in the field of health education and promotion. Health education and promotion has seen four major developments in the last decades: the need for planning, the need for evaluation, the behaviour‐environment issue, and the use of theory. A recently presented protocol for developing theory‐based and evidence‐based interventions, Intervention Mapping, is described here in more detail. Implementation is prominent in planning models and intervention protocols. The same expertise and professionalism that we put into the development of health promotion interventions for our target groups should be put into implementation interventions for programme users and decision‐makers.

Explores the concept of profession in relation to the occupational group known as health promotion officers and examines the question of whether it is appropriate or desirable for health promotion officers to seek to become professionals. Suggests that although the status of a profession initially appears to be desirable for the health promotion officer, such status can carry with it unwanted characteristics such as protectionism and élitism. Concludes that health promotion specialists need to strike a balance between those professional characteristics that are desirable and positive, while avoiding the negative attributes of professions which could seriously undermine the whole purpose and philosophy underpinning the health promotion officer′s role.

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.

This article suggests some dilemmas in producing local mental health promotion strategies, as experienced by a mental health promotion specialist in England. It argues that, because of the misconceptions and misunderstandings associated with mental health and mental health promotion (MHP), some groundwork is needed to communicate a common and clear understanding. The author explains how she has communicated MHP among organisations in her locality. This includes exploring definitions of mental health and its relationship to mental illness, the rationale and effectiveness of promoting mental health and the use of a framework to plan or assess mental health promotion.

The aim of this study is to analyse the position and role of mental health in health promotion policy. Policy documents from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, England and Portugal indicate that, although mental health is considered a serious issue, it is problematic in policy terms. A range of arguments are put forward, making the case for the importance of mental health within the health promotion agenda, including the classification of mental illness as a public health problem, socio‐economic and individual costs of mental health problems and the view that mental well‐being is a crucial element of overall health. However problems of definition, measurement and a traditional focus on treatment and care continue to make mental health promotion problematic for policy makers.