World Health Organisation Guidelines: Mental Health at Work
An estimated 15% of working-age adults have a mental disorder at any point in time.
The World Health Organisation recently issued its Guidelines on Mental Health at Work. This comprehensive guidance which can be downloaded from the WHO website is an invaluable guide to interventions that can implemented to better prevent, protect and promote, and support the mental health of workers. It highlights the importance of organizational interventions, manager and worker training and interventions for individuals. Particular attention is given to workers living with mental health conditions and the interventions that can be used to support them to gain employment, return to work following an absence or to be supported by reasonable accommodations at work.
Risks to Mental Health at Work
At work, risks to mental health, also called psychosocial risks, may be related to job content or work schedule, specific characteristics of the workplace or opportunities for career development among other things.
Risks to mental health at work can include:
- Under-use of skills or being under-skilled for work;
- Excessive workloads or work pace, understaffing;
- Long, unsocial or inflexible hours;
- Lack of control over job design or workload;
- Unsafe or poor physical working conditions;
- Organisational culture that enables negative behaviours;
- Limited support from colleagues or authoritarian supervision;
- Violence, harassment or bullying;
- Discrimination and exclusion;
- Unclear job role;
- Under- or over-promotion;
- Job insecurity, inadequate pay, or poor investment in career development; and
- Conflicting home/work demands.
Although psychosocial risks can be found in all sectors, some workers are more likely to be exposed to them than others, because of what they do or where and how they work. Health, humanitarian or emergency workers often have jobs that carry an elevated risk of exposure to adverse events, which can negatively impact mental health.
Economic recessions or humanitarian and public health emergencies elicit risks such as job loss, financial instability, reduced employment opportunities or increased unemployment.
Work can be a setting which amplifies wider issues that negatively affect mental health, including discrimination and inequality based on factors such as, race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, social origin, migrant status, religion or age.
People with severe mental health conditions are more likely to be excluded from employment, and when in employment, they are more likely to experience inequality at work. Being out of work also poses a risk to mental health. Unemployment, job and financial insecurity, and recent job loss are risk factors for suicide attempts.
The WHO Response
"WHO is committed to improving mental health at work. The WHO global strategy on health, environment and climate change and WHO Comprehensive mental health action plan (2013–2030) outline relevant principles, objectives and implementation strategies to enable good mental health in the workplace. These include addressing social determinants of mental health, such as living standards and working conditions; reducing stigma and discrimination; and increasing access to evidence-based care through health service development, including access to occupational health services. In 2022, WHO’s World mental health report: transforming mental health for all, highlighted the workplace as a key example of a setting where transformative action on mental health is needed.
The WHO guidelines on mental health at work provide evidence-based recommendations to promote mental health, prevent mental health conditions, and enable people living with mental health conditions to participate and thrive in work. The recommendations cover organizational interventions, manager training and worker training, individual interventions, return to work, and gaining employment. The accompanying policy brief by WHO and the International Labour Organization, Mental health at work: policy brief provides a pragmatic framework for implementing the WHO recommendations. It specifically sets out what governments, employers, organizations representing employers and workers, and other stakeholders can do to improve mental health at work."
Action for mental health at work
Government, employers, the organizations which represent workers and employers, and other stakeholders responsible for workers’ health and safety can help to improve mental health at work through action to:
- Prevent work-related mental health conditions by preventing the risks to mental health at work;
- Protect and promote mental health at work;
- Support workers with mental health conditions to participate and thrive in work; and
- Create an enabling environment for change.
Action to address mental health at work should be done with the meaningful involvement of workers and their representatives, and persons with lived experience of mental health conditions.
Supporting people with mental health conditions to participate in and thrive at work
People living with mental health conditions have a right to participate in work fully and fairly. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities provides an international agreement for promoting the rights of people with disabilities (including psychosocial disabilities), including at work. WHO recommends three interventions to support people with mental health conditions gain, sustain and participate in work:
- Reasonable accommodations at work adapt working environments to the capacities, needs and preferences of a worker with a mental health condition. They may include giving individual workers flexible working hours, extra time to complete tasks, modified assignments to reduce stress, time off for health appointments or regular supportive meetings with supervisors.
- Return-to-work programmes combine work-directed care (like reasonable accommodations or phased re-entry to work) with ongoing clinical care to support workers in meaningfully returning to work after an absence associated with mental health conditions, while also reducing mental health symptoms.
- Supported employment initiatives help people with severe mental health conditions to get into paid work and maintain their time on work through continue to provide mental health and vocational support..
Visit our dedicated E-Training Centre website at www.etrainingcentre.org for full details of the Handsam data protection course.
Handsam Mental Health Guidance
Handsam has a library of resources which you may find useful in your facility. They include:
Example Health and Wellbeing Policy
Stress and Occupational Health Improvement Plan
SEND06 Social Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties
Contact us on 03332 070737 or email info@handsam.co.uk to find out more.