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Work-life challenges experienced by employees navigating pregnancy, maternity, and parenting young children are well documented in the literature. Correspondingly, work-life balance policies and provisions aimed at supporting affected staff are well established in many modern organizations. Within this agenda however, complications within maternity journeys, and specifically the intersection with mental health has been neglected. In this chapter, we consider the work-life issues associated with perinatal (pregnancy and post-birth) mental illness. After introducing perinatal mental illness, and its impact on individuals and families, we consider the two-way relationship between illness and work: how employment factors influence the development of perinatal mental illness and recovery trajectories, with implications for family life; and how such illnesses impact work and employment. We offer key insights from our empirical research on this topic in the context of UK policing, highlighting challenges linked to the nature of police work and organization culture, and issues that are more broadly applicable to how maternity and mental illness are treated in the workplace. The chapter offers recommendations for people management practice aimed at reducing or mitigating occupational factors that exacerbate illness and maximizing those facilitating recovery in the perinatal period and beyond, thus advancing work-life inclusion.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of an online mental health ally program on several measurements of readiness to help and stigma reduction. Allyship is one way to support people with mental health challenges beyond traditional care services.

The efficacy of the program was evaluated in pre and postintervention surveys (n = 26) including measures of self-care, help-seeking intentions, peer-support self-efficacy, advocacy, knowledge of resources and stigma. A within-subject, repeated measures design was conducted analyzing changes at completion. Twenty-six participants who completed the program (either with or without lived experience of mental illness) were included in the study. A subgroup of participants (n = 11) who reported lived experiences of mental illness were assigned additional measures of internalized stigma, stigma stress, stigma resistance and self-esteem.

Analysis of mean differences indicated a statistically significant change in scores pre and postcompletion. The program increased peer-support, help-seeking intentions and self-esteem, while reducing internalized stigma and stigma stress. Findings provide preliminary support for program effectiveness in training individuals to support others and themselves through mental health challenges.

Trained allies might improve the lives of individuals with mental health challenges by reducing discrimination and improving social support. We discuss the implication of allies to complement the mental health system.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first exploratory study on the efficacy of an online ally training program for individuals with mental illness. The NoStigmas Ally Program is a novel and original development in ally training.

People who experience mental illness often demonstrate limited help-seeking behaviours. There is evidence to suggest that media content can influence negative attitudes towards mental illness; less is known about how media impacts help-seeking behaviours. The purpose of this study is to identify if media plays a role in people’s decisions to seek help for their mental health.

The databases Academic Search Complete, CINAHL Plus with Full Text, MEDLINE, APA PsycArticles, APA PsycInfo, Social Sciences Full Text [H.W. Wilson] and Soc Index were systemically searched for papers in the English language that investigated the link between media and help-seeking for mental illness.

Sixteen studies met eligibility criteria. There was some evidence to suggest that various forms of media – including video and online resources – can positively influence help-seeking for mental health. Print media had some limited effect on help-seeking behaviours but was weaker in comparison to other forms of media. There was no evidence to suggest that media discourages people from seeking help.

This review identified that, given the heterogeneity of the included papers, and the limited evidence available, there is a need for more focused research to determine how media impacts mental health-related help-seeking behaviours.

This study aims to analyse in the health access of Indonesian illegal migrant workers in Malaysia, during which time they were not covered by Indonesia’s national social health insurance.

This study adopted a sociolegal approach, the research approach is conducted to understand the effect of a law, policy and regulation on access to health-care access among Indonesian migrant workers working illegally in Malaysia. This research involved 110 respondents who work illegally in Malaysia. The research explored the perceptions of respondents concerning to health access services of illegal migrant workers.

The study demonstrated the weakness of provisions intended to guarantee the health access to health care of migrant workers from Indonesia illegally working in Malaysia. A decline in health status was observed, but it was not significant. Bilateral cooperation between Indonesia and Malaysia is necessary to provide a framework for Indonesia providing health care to its citizens working in Malaysia, regardless of their legal status.

This paper concerns on the Indonesia illegal migrant workers experiencing illness and the access to the health service in Malaysia, and also the implementation of international regulation to protect Indonesian illegal migrant workers in Malaysia under ASEAN Consensus on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers.

The purpose of this paper is to describe six recovery-oriented peer support experiences and strategies implemented in different regions of Brazil in the past 12 years, and explore challenges to their development and potential for empowerment and citizenship.

In this paper, a group of stakeholders in mental health services involving people with lived experience of severe mental illness describe their experiences with services of peer support. These were all conducted in Brazil and in partnership with the International Recovery and Citizenship Collective (IRCC) and The Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health. The authors met monthly to exchange experiences, studies and practices, and six experiences were selected, described, analyzed and compared. A discussion of these experiences, their challenges, impact and potential followed.

The explored experiences emphasize that peer support, lived experience leadership and advocacy are feasible in the Brazilian mental health system and can help advance the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform.

This paper is limited to the experience of researchers already engaged in peer support work in six cities in Brazil. Although they represent several different regions in Brazil, there are areas it has not reached. Further research should address and provide a broader view of peer support and recovery strategies spreading in the country.

These experiences demonstrate the feasibility and acceptability of the recovering citizenship approach to reduce stigma, promote empowerment, autonomy, activism and advocacy, and increase a sense of belonging for those in recovery and marginalized by society. The Brazilian psychiatric reform can benefit from including peer supporters as mental health treatment providers.

This paper provides a novel view of the state of the art of peer support initiatives in Brazil and can inspire individuals, government and communities as they see and understand the breadth, depth and meanings of these peer support experiences.

This paper aims to introduce International Digital Collaborative Autoethnographical Psychobiography (IDCAP).

This paper describes how IDCAP was developed to answer research questions about what it takes and what it means to recover from mental illness. During its development, IDCAP combined the diverse and intersectional experiences, knowledge and interests of an Anglo-Swedish research team with what could be found in different publications concerning the experiences and the mental illnesses of the musicians Syd Barrett, Peter Green and Brian Wilson.

IDCAP combines features of autoethnography and psychobiography to offer a novel qualitative research method.

Whilst IDCAP was created to focus on recovery from mental illness and musicians, it can be applied to other areas of research. It shares the same limitations as autoethnography and psychobiography, although some of the features of IDCAP may go some way to mitigate against these.

IDCAP is a novel research method that is offered to other researchers to develop and enhance further through application.

IDCAP is a collaborative research method that encourages the involvement of a wide range of researchers from different countries and cultures. It can be used to give voice to marginalised groups and to counter discrimination and prejudice. Recovery from mental illness is a topic of great personal and social value.

IDCAP is a novel research method that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, has not been explicitly used before.

Filicide, the killing of a child by a parent, is one of the only crimes committed by women and men in roughly equal numbers. Women's violence against their children, however, more profoundly confounds common understandings of the links between gender and family violence, leading to its ambivalent treatment within the media. When men kill their children, they are usually characterised as either monsters or as sad, failed men. When women kill their children, they are usually represented as bad mothers or mad mothers suffering under the burdens of the pathological female body. In both cases, a mental illness/distress lens is common, though how it manifests is inflected by gender. This chapter examines recent Australian news representations of maternal filicide-suicide. Focussing on the mental illness/distress frame in news, it examines the ideological work this frame does in decontextualising and de-gendering maternal filicide, framing women's mental illness/distress in ‘psychocentric’ terms that strip it of political or social significance and subjecting it to an individualised lens that obscures the gendered aetiologies of women's use of violence.

Female adults diagnosed with myalgia encephalomyelitis (ME) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) often are marginalised because their condition is not fully recognised by medical and health-care systems. The purpose of this small-scale study was to explore the lived experiences of adult females with ME/CFS in England in relation to contributing factors that impact their occupational participation.

A qualitative study design using semi-structured interviews was used with nine female adult participants who were selected using a purposive sampling method. A Thematic Networks tool was used to analyse data.

Four organising themes were identified: impairment-, person-, environment- and society-related factors. Two global themes, invisibility and diagnosis stigma, were identified as the overarching issues that female adults with ME/CFS face in occupational participation.

Many of the issues that contribute to lack of participation by this population are associated with environmental factors which are secondary to their illness.

Drawing on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, this study aims to examine which job demands individuals with diagnosed mental illness perceive to be most challenging as they navigate the workplace, why this is the case and which resources individuals tend to mobilize to meet these demands.

The authors draw on 257 qualitative surveys filled out by individuals with mental illness in various parts of the world.

The findings show that job demands that are common in today's workplace such as a high workload and a stressful environment are considered challenging by individuals with mental illness. Further, the authors show that this is the result of the ideal worker norm consisting of the need to be a steady performer that is confident, resilient and social with which the performer cannot comply on the one hand and the particularities of this population, such as performers' self-perceived low self-esteem, sensitivity to stress, fluctuating symptoms and difficulties with the social aspects of organizational life on the other hand.

The study points to the unique challenges of individuals with mental illness in the workplace and highlights the role human resource management (HRM) can play in providing support to allow this population to meet the demands of one's job more easily and thrive at work.

This study aims to assess the knowledge and attitudes toward recovering citizenship (RC)/5 Rs and mental illness of people aged ≥18 years in Hong Kong using a telephone survey approach.

A questionnaire comprised the Mental Health Knowledge Schedule (MAKS), Short Form-Community Attitudes Toward Mental Illness (SF-CAMI) and questions on attitudes toward RC/5 Rs, was administered on the phone.

A total of 1,009 respondents completed the telephone survey. A high mean score of MAKS (4.37 ± 1.08) was found with 68%–94% answering the knowledge items correctly. The mean score of SF-CAMI was 46.50 ± 8.74 with the most positive attitude toward fear and exclusion. Approximately half had heard about a similar concept of RC and 79%–94.3% agreed with people in recovery to possess the 5 Rs. Those with greater knowledge or more positive toward mental illness, or knowing someone in recovery were more supportive toward 5 Rs. Those aged 18–44 years, attained a post-secondary education, were employed, and received a monthly income of US$3,861–6,434 were significantly more positive toward 5 Rs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study assessing the views of RC of people in the community. The sample had a good knowledge of mental illness but recognition of recovery from mental illness and a sympathetic view toward people in recovery can be further improved. Besides promotion programs, dissemination of the concept of RC and having people in recovery take up valued roles in the community could potentially facilitate the acceptance of social inclusion and acceptance in the community.