ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a keynote and a guide to the rest of the book. It examines the nature of mental, emotional and social health, suggests that we need a framework of concepts and principles for examining these matters, and that the approaches of health promotion in general and the health promoting school in particular are currently the most coherent, comprehensive, ethically sound and well-proven. The concepts and principles that underlie health promotion and the health promoting school idea are set out, their relevance to social and affective health in schools suggested, and indications given of where they will be explored in more detail in the chapters that follow.
