Lessons Learned from Diverse Efforts to Change Social Norms and Opportunities and Strategies to Promote Behavior Change in Behavioral Health Proceedings of Two Workshops (2017) / Chapter Skim
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11 Perspectives from Outside the United States
11 Perspectives from Outside the United States
Pages 105-118
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From page 105... ...
Robert Whitley, assistant professor, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, presented on the Opening Minds Initiative of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Finally, Anthony Jorm, who leads the population mental health group within the Melbourne School of Population Health, joined remotely by WebEx and described what has been learned in Australia about changing behavioral health norms.
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From page 106... ...
In the past few years, Evans-Lacko continued, the campaign has been moving toward trying to facilitate social contact in different ways. For example, it has used national media activity to engage people through celebrities, but it has also used local-level events to stimulate communication about mental health, with people either disclosing their own mental health problems or just engaging the public in talking about the issues or thinking about how they can support people with mental health problems.
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From page 107... ...
. concept of stigma was operationalized in three domains: mental health knowledge, community attitudes toward mental illness, and reported and intended behaviors (i.e., problems of behavior or discrimination)
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From page 108... ...
They found that the cost of the Time to Change campaign was a fraction of the cost of the condition of mental illness. Table 11-1 shows the campaign's lower cost relative to other ongoing public health campaigns targeting obesity, alcohol misuse, and stroke (Evans-Lacko et al., 2013b)
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From page 109... ...
She noted that overall, modest but significant improvements were found to be associated with the campaign. The triangulation using different evaluation methods helped add confidence to the findings, but, she added, it would be important to continue to develop measures with which to investigate behavior change.
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From page 110... ...
. She believes the evaluation findings support the use of a multifaceted strategy with attention to multiple strategies and targets by building awareness and creating "noise" through social marketing, and also by supporting empowerment and local engagement led by people with lived experience.
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From page 111... ...
The programs target students and practitioners in various disciplines including medicine, social work, clinical psychology, and occupational therapy. They also target individuals who have been practicing for 30 or 40 years.
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From page 112... ...
The Department of National Defense's program, called Road to Mental Readiness, involves training trainers in the military and on the ground with two aims: to help people identify when their own mental health is worsening and teach them strategies of self-resilience, and to encourage those people to seek care when necessary and to create a climate where doing so is acceptable. Achieving these goals, Whitley noted, is particularly challenging in an environment with such a masculine culture, and the initiative emphasizes changing the culture from being ashamed for seeking help to acknowledging that it is good for those who need help to do so and saves money in the long run.
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From page 113... ...
CHANGING BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SOCIAL NORMS: INTERVENTIONS AND OUTCOMES FROM AUSTRALIA Jorm focused on concepts of mental health literacy, evidence that it has dramatically improved in Australia, and reasons for the improvement. He said it is difficult to know specifically what led to the improvement, but there is evidence that some interventions contributed to the change.
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From page 114... ...
Jorm remarked that he had provided only a few examples but that this was the general tenor of the findings, which led to the question of why these improvements had occurred. Mental Health Literacy Interventions Jorm explained that it was difficult to attribute the change to any one intervention or set of interventions because so many activities were ongoing to improve mental health literacy.
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From page 115... ...
Jorm continued by explaining that Australian Rotary Clubs formed an organization called Australian Rotary Health that took mental illness as its major focus. In this initiative, rotary clubs run community forums across the country for which they hire a hall and invite the mayor, the local member of parliament, and prominent and ordinary citizens to hear a person with a mental health condition and a provider of mental health services speak.
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From page 116... ...
He also cited Australia's population research approach to assessing change in social norms as a result of multiple planned and unplanned activities stemming from a specific goal in national and state policies to build mental health literacy. One of the first questions from the audience was about the unexpected results of these initiatives and what was then done differently.
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From page 117... ...
CLOSING REMARKS David Wegman, chair of the Committee on the Science of Changing Behavioral Health Social Norms, closed the workshop by summarizing a number of key points made by presenters that stood out for him. The first was the critical importance of a multidimensional approach.
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From page 118... ...
118 PROCEEDINGS PART II: OPPORTUNITIES AND STRATEGIES the work being done. Everyone comes with biases, he said, and some of those biases need to be challenged daily by those who are living or have lived the experience of the problem being addressed.
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