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During her opening remarks at the recent WIMWA Summit, Sabina Shugg AM outlined the importance she places on the tenets of the community based health program Act -Belong – Commit in helping her to strike a healthy balance in her own life.

Act-Belong-Commit is a comprehensive health promotion campaign that encourages individuals to take action to protect and promote their own mental wellbeing and encourages organisations that provide mentally healthy activities to promote participation in those activities.

The A-B-C guidelines for positive mental health provide a simple approach that we can adopt to become more mentally healthy:

Act: Being active—physically, socially, mentally and spiritually are the basic building blocks for good mental health. Being active in these ways keeps us alert, energetic and in touch with others There is substantial evidence that individuals with higher levels of such activity have higher levels of wellbeing and mental health.

Belong: Having strong social connections with friends, family and the wider community are an essential ingredient of a productive and fulfilling life. In fact, we often define ourselves through membership of our family, school or workplace, our sporting interests and our involvement in community events. Feeling part of something—even something like a football crowd or rock concert audience—boosts our mood and makes us feel good about ourselves and glad to be alive. There are many ways to increase our sense of belonging; it is all about joining in and connecting with others.

Commit: Making deeper commitments to personal pursuits. For example, one can be a spectator/member of the local theatre group or sporting club or an active participant or volunteer to be treasurer or in some other way commit deeper to the organisation. Similarly, an individual can enrol in a hobby class that requires little intellectual effort or a walking group that has a fairly regular route of mild effort, or, the individual can take on a challenging (but achievable) educational class or join a walking group that has an orienteering bent. The greater the level of commitment to one’s interest or group, the greater sense of self, the greater satisfaction from one’s efforts, and the greater contribution to personal and community mental health. You can ‘commit’ by volunteering, helping others, learning new skills or setting a personal challenge—all of these things make us feel good about ourselves, improves our self-confidence, self-esteem and enhances our mental health.

There is substantial evidence that these three domains represent increasing levels of contribution to positive mental health (and in fact, to physical health). For more information please head to the Act-Belong-Commit website here.

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