Situating mental health and addiction training within a public health orientation

Mental health and addiction services face growing pressure to respond to complex population health needs while reducing persistent inequities. Conventional education pathways for mental health and addiction practitioners remain primarily oriented towards biomedical and individualised models of care, which can leave graduates underprepared to engage with prevention, social determinants of health, and community-level responses. This perspective piece examines the limitations in prevailing educational approaches and argues that mental health and addiction education should be more deliberately situated within a public health orientation. Drawing on a curriculum case study from Aotearoa New Zealand, we illustrate how a culturally grounded pedagogical framework, the Whakapiri Framework, can support the integration of public health foundations alongside clinical skill development. The Bachelor of Health Science (Mental Health and Addiction) programme is presented as an illustrative example of how workforce education can be structured to support diverse practice roles while maintaining shared foundations in population health and Indigenous frameworks of wellbeing. While educational reform alone cannot resolve systemic challenges, aligning mental health and addiction training more closely with public health approaches may better equip practitioners to work across individual, community, and system levels.