What makes mental health promotion effective?

When designing a comprehensive strategy for mental health promotion, as that called for in the European WHO Action Plan for Mental Health (WHO, 2005), one possible effective framework for such a strategy is to take a settings approach. The Ottawa Charter (WHO, 1986) for health promotion emphasises a settings-based approach in creating supportive environments for health, as reflected in the statement that 'health is created and lived by people within the settings of their everyday life; where they learn, work, play and love..'. An overview of effective mental health promotion programmes across different settings has been presented by Jané-Llopis and colleagues (Jané-Llopis, Barry, Hosman and Patel, 2005) in this volume, and in other recent reviews (WHO, 2004a; WHO, 2004b). The following section describes why the home, the school, the workplace and the community are four crucial settings for intervention, and describes a set of health and mental health determinants that are addressed through interventions in these settings.