This special edition of Advances in Mental Health focuses on seven papers that at first glance appear to have little relationship to each other. They are, however, a selection of papers presented at a national academic conference, Minds Matter, held in Coffs Harbour, NSW, in April 2014. This conference was the culmination of research activities associated with a number of Australian universities that shared a focus on rural mental health and wellbeing, as part of a collaborative research network. The diversity of the papers contained in this special issue reflects the breadth of research areas encompassed in both the conference and in the work of this collaborative research network.