ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the school-level implications of the movement to promote law students' mental wellbeing and considers how student wellbeing strategies, can be conceptualized and embedded, and thereby become sustainable, within an integrated, whole-school approach. Field and Kift have noted in the Australian context that promotion of law student mental health become the responsibility of the entire Australian legal academic community. Positive strategies to enhance student wellbeing include those that foster resilience, life-balance, self-management, reflection, peer engagement and positive professional identities. Positive psychology and self-determination theory (SDT) have provided sound theoretical frameworks for such programmes, and empirical research into the factors that contribute to and those that mitigate law student psychological distress provides additional direction. The World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the Ottawa Charter in 1986, defining health promotion as 'the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health', where 'health' is defined as 'a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being'.
