From individuals to populations: approaches to promoting mental health and preventing mental illness

The promotion of wellbeing and the prevention of mental illness requires both an individual and a population response. Even though mental health is experienced at an individual level, its impacts one ’ s family (Reupert et al., 2015), and may have further negative economic and societal consequences on a workforce and population level. A population response needs to account for structural determinants of mental health, including economic, geopolitical and environmental factors, such as poverty, violence and inequality. Due to these individual as well as broad ranging impacts, its incumbent on government policy, legislature