Dahlgren's 1991 Rainbow Model Of The Determinants Of Mental Health

Mental health is an identifiable health issue in contemporary Australia. Mental Health affects an individual’s ability to act, think and feel and thus a mental health condition is defined “by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behaviour” (World Health Organisation, 2022). Mental health is a large problem for students, regardless of age and type of education they are receiving. For example 39.6% of people within the student demographic age group of 16-24 experienced a 12-month mental disorder in 2020-2021 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022). Natasha Bita’s (2023) article “‘Coping classes’ for high-anxiety children”, published by The Australian, Canberra on the February 9th, 2023, discusses

This model recognises that health determinants are multi-layered and thus the model’s widespread impact is effective in conceptualising the importance of a more holistic perspective on health rather than medicalised models which focus largely on the cause of various diseases. (Dahlgren &Whitehead, 2021). The model incorporates five layers of influence on population health, specifically age, sex and constitutional factors, individual lifestyle, social and community networks, living and working conditions and general socioeconomic, cultural and environmental conditions to categorise determinants that individuals can tackle to achieve good health and wellbeing (Dahlgren &Whitehead, 2021). Education is a determinant that falls under the category of living and working conditions. Education is classified as a determinant of health due to its association with morbidity and health behaviours as well as its ability to shape occupational opportunities and its associated income (Lancet Public Health, 2020). The prevalence of mental health conditions in students is alarming and thus education as a determinant is implemented to address this but may have either positive or negative

School-based education campaigns on mental health provide information, resources and training to the education sector to support mental health in students (Laurens et al., 2022). Upon delivery of mental health education regarding positive school community, it was rated that over a 4–5-year implementation period, was 45.3% moderately effective and 37% extremely effective in addressing student mental health (Laurens et al., 2022). On an effectiveness scale of 1-3 where three is “multiple studies documenting positive behavioural outcomes immediately post-intervention, with at least one study indicating positive behavioural impacts at follow-up at least one year after the intervention ended” (Laurens et al., 2022), many Australian education initiatives were ranked as a three. MindUp, and Skills for growing were two educational campaigns that were ranked as a three and thus positively impacted mental health both throughout the campaign and during a follow-up (Laurens et al., 2022). This therefore shows the positive impact that education can have on mental health and as a result of this, other positive outcomes such as self-awareness, sense of belonging and social/emotional skills are learnt to reduce mental health burden in the future (Laurens et al.,