15 - Case study: the Act–Belong–Commit campaign promoting positive mental health

Summary

The Act–Belong–Commit community-based social marketing campaign targets individuals to engage in activities that enhance mental health. It simultaneously encourages community organisations offering such activities to promote their activities under the Act–Belong–Commit banner. The campaign provides a simple framework for mental health promotion professionals to communicate with, and gain the co-operation of, potential partners and stakeholders within and outside the health system.

The campaign was developed as an upstream or primary prevention intervention. However, the campaign messages are also appropriate for at-risk individuals and groups (secondary prevention), and for people recovering from a mental illness (tertiary prevention). Hence, as it evolves the campaign is developing a number of programme components and partners for secondary and tertiary prevention.

The campaign is conducted by Mentally Healthy WA, a group based within the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University in Western Australia (WA). This chapter draws on a number of publications available from the website (e.g., Donovan, James and Jalleh 2007; Donovan et al. 2003a, 2006a; Jalleh et al. 2007).