Mental health promotion education in multicultural settings

This paper addresses the education of graduate nursing students in mental health promotion in multicultural settings. First an overview of the historical development of health promotion theory in Canada is presented. Emerging concepts in mental health promotion are then considered. Referring to a graduate course on youth and mental health promotion, course design, which draws from across disciplines and recognizes the complexities in mental health promotion practice in multicultural settings, is illustrated. Under a mental health promotion perspective healthy development is recognized to arise from the interaction between people and systems in society, providing a systems-based understanding of the interplay between culture and health. The course’s underlying threads, consisting of youth development and mental health, culture, and integration of learning through an intersectional perspective, and its related substantive content and process are discussed. It is concluded that by fostering students’ critical awareness of intersections (for example, gender, life stage, migrant and racialized status), the growth and development of youth from diverse cultural backgrounds can be contextualized within existing support, or access barriers to, systems in multicultural societies.