Primary prevention and health promotion have been implemented to address mental health, and specifically women’s mental health, for some time.
The National Women’s Health Strategy has five priority areas for action relating to mental health. The first key priority areas is, “Enhance gender-specific mental health education, awareness and primary prevention.”
…prevention of mental illness is closely linked to broader social and economic factors such as those that help build individual and community resilience. The notion of taking a systems approach to building good mental health, rather than just responding to mental illness, emerged frequently in the evidence the Commission has received. Many social determinants shape mental health (p.11).
Priority Actions for Mental Health from the National Strategy
- Collaborating with existing early learning institutions and schools
- Equip staff such as educators to recognise the factors that influence mental health in young girls and adolescents.
- Increase awareness of the impact of sex and gender on mental health for women and girls.
- Identify and address the longer-term systemic forms of discrimination in information provision, service delivery and other social determinants that impact on mental health.
- Support the development of media and community awareness materials
- Develop and deliver ‘protective’ mental health strategies to reduce the onset of mental ill-health.
For the Women's Health Services
For women’s health services, it is vital to take an intersectional gender approach to mental health from primary prevention to early intervention, treatment and recovery.
Women’s Health Victoria (2019) eloquently summarise the approach to implementing health promotion and primary prevention in women’s mental health while considering the intersectional factors which impact on women:
...Investing in and strengthening gender equity ... can address the social determinants that lead to unequal mental health outcomes for young women... investing in gender equity is key to preventing violence against women and can also improve the health and wellbeing of men and boys and gender diverse people. Applying an intersectional lens will ensure interventions are sensitive, appropriate and effective, and that they support equity among girls and women (pp. 3, 21).