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Early learning services and schools provide unique settings for mental health promotion and early intervention due to the potential for population-level dosage and reach in terms of reducing multiple risk factors and enabling protective factors among young people. Educators play a key role in supporting children and young people's experiences of, and access to mental health promotion opportunities, and hold unparalleled opportunity in terms of creating mental health–promoting learning environments. In 2018, the Australian National Mental Health in Education Initiative, Be You, was launched. Be You is a multi-million-dollar Australian government–supported initiative, freely available to all 24,000 early learning services, primary and secondary schools throughout Australia. The potential for subsequent population reach is proposed to potentially exceed that of any mental health promotion initiative for children and young people previously observed in Australia. Be You aims to foster mentally healthy learning communities across Australia through building capacity among educators to embed mental health promotion strategies. The Initiative was developed based on a review and integration of previous national mental health promotion frameworks, with an overall alignment to existing state and territory education, social and emotional well-being frameworks, and the Australian Curriculum. In delivering facilitated support from specialised consultants to early learning services and schools participating in the initiative, Be You draws on professional learning principles designed to build capacity in educators and educational systems relating to mental health promotion. It uses an updated, multi-module online platform providing interactive, evidence-based resources. This paper presents the Be You framework, describes the evidence sources used to inform the underlying principles and objectives, discusses the specific components that form the initiative, details the professional learning modules and content, and discusses potential implications for population mental health and prevention efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: A considerable gap exists in health and social emotional well-being between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous Australians. Recent research in stress neurobiology highlights biological pathways that link early adversity and traumas as well as life stresses to ill health. We argue that the neurobiological stress response and its maladaptive changes, termed allostatic load, provide a useful framework to understand how adversity leads to physical and mental illness in Indigenous people. In this paper we review the biology of allostatic load and make links between stress-induced systemic hormonal, metabolic and immunological changes and physical and mental illnesses.Conclusions: Exposure to chronic stress throughout life results in an increased allostatic load that may contribute to a number of metabolic, cardiovascular and mental disorders that shorten life expectancy in Indigenous Australians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The tripartite framework for principled practice was developed as part of the Wundargoodie Aboriginal Youth and Community Wellbeing Programme. The programme engages natural helpers to enhance critical health literacy. This paper examines the importance of translational research to enhancing critical health literacy for this group of de facto health workers using the work of the Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet as an example. Translational research provides workforce support for those who are time poor and overburdened. Connecting these concepts and natural helpers will make a positive difference to Aboriginal health outcomes.Conclusions: There is a need for the development of translational research products that enhance the critical health literacy of natural helpers. The tripartite framework for principled practice supports reflective and accountable practice in the intercultural space to build trust and confidence between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people to enhance the opportunity for authentic knowledge production and transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]