Researchers Propose ‘Mental Health Promotion Fatigue’ as a New Candidate Construct

A new conceptual paper published in Discover Mental Health proposes that repeated exposure to mental health promotion campaigns, programs, and activities may gradually erode people's receptivity to them. The article, authored by Edwin Gustavo Estrada-Araoz and colleagues and published as an open access perspective on 26 October 2026, introduces "mental health promotion fatigue" as a candidate construct and lays out a conceptual model of its possible antecedents, psychological mechanisms, manifestations, and consequences. The authors are explicit that the construct and the relationships in their model have not yet been empirically confirmed and should be regarded as provisional.

The framework was developed through conceptual theorizing, informed by a targeted, non-systematic literature search and selected procedures from concept analysis. It does not report new data from surveys or experiments. Instead, it draws together established lines of research on message fatigue, information overload, habituation, psychological reactance, and message avoidance, and uses them to generate testable propositions about what may happen when the public encounters mental health promotion messages again and again over time.

At the core of the model is a hypothesis that cumulative exposure to mental health promotion initiatives may be associated with a progressive within-person decline in receptivity. In other words, the same individual, over repeated encounters with campaigns intended to improve knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to psychological well-being, may become progressively less responsive to those messages. The authors frame this as a hypothesis rather than a demonstrated effect, and the model is designed to make the claim precise enough that it can be measured and tested in future studies.

Three mechanisms are proposed as possible contributors to such a decline. Habituation refers to the diminishing response that can occur when a stimulus is repeated. Information overload captures the strain that may arise when the volume of messaging exceeds a person's capacity to process it.

Psychological reactance describes a motivational response that can occur when communications are perceived as threatening freedom or autonomy, potentially prompting resistance rather than compliance. The framework treats these as candidate mechanisms, not established causes, and positions cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses as proximal manifestations of the proposed construct, the observable forms that fatigue might take. Beyond these immediate manifestations, the paper also identifies possible later consequences of mental health promotion fatigue, conditions that may influence whether and how the phenomenon develops, and a set of theoretical propositions intended to guide future empirical work.

The authors suggest that the framework can serve as a basis for developing measurement instruments and for evaluating whether the proposed construct offers explanatory value beyond existing concepts such as message fatigue and message avoidance. Until such instruments exist and studies are conducted, the model remains a scaffold for research rather than a set of confirmed findings. The significance of the proposal lies in its timing.

Mental health promotion initiatives have expanded considerably, increasing public exposure to campaigns and activities designed to foster psychological well-being. Yet, as the authors note, the effects of this cumulative exposure remain insufficiently examined. For now, the framework stands as a carefully hedged starting point: a named phenomenon, a set of hypothesized mechanisms, and an agenda for the empirical studies that will determine whether mental health promotion fatigue is a real and useful concept.

Subject of Research: A conceptual framework proposing mental health promotion fatigue as a candidate construct describing declining receptivity to repeated well-being campaigns

Article Title: A conceptual framework for defining and examining mental health promotion fatigue

Article References: Estrada-Araoz, E. G., Larico-Uchamaco, G. R., Paredes-Valverde, Y., Quispe-Herrera, R., Ayay-Arista, G., & Quispe-Aquise, J. (2026). A conceptual framework for defining and examining mental health promotion fatigue. Discover Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44192-026-00629-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44192-026-00629-8

Keywords: mental health promotion fatigue, message fatigue, habituation, information overload, psychological reactance, message avoidance, conceptual framework, receptivity, health communication, Discover Mental Health, conceptual, framework