2024/11/25 by Annika Luebbe, Zoe Rutherford, Sandra Diminic +3 · 1 voice
Health Professions · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Global Health Workforce Issues #Rural development and sustainability #Agriculture and Farm Safety
paper · doi:10.1016/j.anzjph.2024.100201
openalex publication_date 2024/11/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
OBJECTIVES: This review aimed to 1) identify existing rural strengths in the literature that proposed a relationship to mental health, 2) classify strengths into a socioecological framework, and 3) identify which strengths make a conceptual link to improved mental health. METHODS: Literature was systematically reviewed using online databases (PubMed, PsycInfo, CINAHL, and Scopus). Applicable original research studies that met the inclusion criteria, published (1990-2022) from Australia, Canada, and the United States were thematically analysed. RESULTS: Sixty-one articles from Australia (n=28, 46%), Canada (n=8, 13%), and the United States (n=25, 41%) identified mental health-strengths relationships (e.g. social networks, nature). Twenty-seven studies proposed conceptual links to improved mental health and identified potential 'mechanisms' to harness strengths (e.g. identification, referral). CONCLUSIONS: Despite an entrenched rural deficit discourse, many strengths of rural communities were identified in the literature that, using an adapted socioecological framework to categorise, may be harnessed to improve the mental health of communities across the socioecological continuum. IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH: Understanding existing strengths that are embedded in rural communities can inform future mental health policy and commissioning models in a way that is relevant and sustainable for communities, while recognising rural agency.