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Goal setting is a crucial aspect of client-centered practice in occupational therapy (OT) for mental health conditions. However, it remains to be seen how goal-setting has been delivered in mental health, particularly the OT process. The purpose of this scoping review was to explore the nature and extent of goal setting delivered in mental health and informed OT practice.

The authors followed the guidelines of Arksey and O’Malley (2005) and searched three databases using key search terms: “mental disorder,” “goal setting,” and “occupational therapy” and their synonyms.

After excluding duplicate records, the authors initially screened 883 records and resulted in 20 records in total after the screening process. Most of the identified articles used goal-setting delivered by both a health professional and a client (n = 14), and focused on people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (n = 13), but three interventions were delivered by occupational therapists. Further research needs on goal-setting in mental health OT, exploring the reliability and validity of different goal-setting strategies and investigating the effectiveness of goal-setting for promoting behavior change and client engagement across various mental health conditions and settings.

The scoping review has some limitations, such as not investigating the validity and reliability of goal-setting strategies identified, and excluding conference papers and non-English articles.

This scoping review presents a mapping of how goal-setting has been delivered in mental health and informed OT practice. The findings suggest limited research in OT and highlight the need for more studies to address the evidence gap in individualized client-centered OT.

This study aims to explore the double-edged sword effect of work connectivity behavior after-hours (WCBA) on employees’ occupational mental health. Drawing on job demand-resource theory, the authors examined the double mediating mechanism of work autonomy and work-family conflict on the relationship of WCBA, work engagement and work burnout. At the same time, the authors examined the moderating role of responsiveness from superiors, hoping to clarify how WCBA brings employees positive experiences (engagement) or negative experiences (burnout).

Under the mediating mechanism of work autonomy and work-family conflict, the authors built a dual-path model and moderated mediation model to examine the effect of WCBA on work engagement and burnout. Two-stage paired data were collected from various industries in China by distributing questionnaires to employees. The hypotheses were tested using the structural equation model and the bootstrap test method.

The results showed that WCBA positively affects work engagement and burnout. Work autonomy plays a mediating role both in the relationship between WCBA and work engagement and in the relationship between WCBA and work burnout. In addition, work-family conflict plays a mediating role both in the relationship between WCBA and work burnout and in the relationship between WCBA and work engagement. Responsiveness from superiors not only moderated the relationship between WCBA and work autonomy and between WCBA and work-family conflict but also moderated the mediating effects of work autonomy and work-family conflict.

This study examined the double-edged sword effect of WCBA on employees’ occupational mental health, the dual mediation of work autonomy and work-family conflict and the moderating effect of responsiveness from superiors. This study can enrich the understanding of the effects of WCBA as well as the influential factors and boundary conditions related to employees’ occupational mental health. Organizations (represented by superiors) and individuals were integrated into one model, providing a new perspective for studying WCBA. The research will help managers and individuals gain a comprehensive understanding of WCBA, and how to enhance its positive effects and circumvent its negative effects.

Managers play a crucial role in organizations. They make decisions that directly influence organizational success and significantly impact employees’ mental health, development and performance. They are responsible for ensuring the financial well-being and long-term sustainability of organizations. However, their mental health is often overlooked, which can negatively affect employees and organizations. This study aims to address managers’ mental health at work, by examining specifically the direct and indirect effects of identity verification on their psychological distress and depression through self-esteem at work. The study also aims to examine the moderating as well as moderated mediation effects of identity salience.

A sample of 314 Canadian managers working in 56 different companies was studied, using multilevel analyses.

The findings showed that the verification of managers’ identity vis-à-vis recognition is positively associated with psychological distress and depression. Self-esteem completely mediates the association between low identity verification vis-à-vis work control and psychological distress, and also the association between low identity verification vis-à-vis work control and superior support and depression, while it partially mediates the association between low identity verification vis-à-vis recognition and depression.

This study can also help both managers and human resource management practitioners in understanding the role of workplaces in the identity verification process and developing relevant interventions to prevent mental health issues among managers at work.

This study proposed a relatively unexplored approach to the study of managers’ mental health at work. Its integration of identity theory contributes to expanding research on management and workplace mental health issues.

Impoverished employee mental health is harmful to employees and organisational performance. There is emerging interest in employee mental health in the human resource management (HRM) field. The majority of these studies mainly focus on the organisational and individual levels from the psychological and managerial perspectives without considering the sectoral characteristics and societal context.

This perspective paper draws on extant literature as well as 10 informal interviews with medical professionals, organisational leaders in the public sector, teachers and HR professionals to shed light on employee mental health research, practice and challenges in the Chinese context.

This paper reveals national, sectoral, occupational and individual factors that shape mental health problems, individual coping mechanisms and organisational interventions. It also shows international influence on employee mental health in the form of institutional pressure and knowledge transfer.

There is limited research on employee mental health and HRM in the Chinese context, which restricts the scope of discussion in this paper, but at the same time presents rich future research opportunities that may be relevant to other national settings.

Managing the mental health of the workforce is part of the mental health management of the population, which means a holistic approach to building a mental health eco-system needs to be adopted. The authors call for more research on employee mental health in the Chinese context to provide evidence to support policy development and organisational efforts to scale up mental health services at the national and organisational levels. The authors also provide practical recommendations for policymakers and employing organisations.

The authors present a multi-level and multi-factor overview related to employee mental health in the Chinese context. The authors argue for a resource-based and multi-stakeholder approach, which will help inform and improve mental health policy and practice. The authors present several avenues for future scholarship and research. The authors extend the research frontiers of employee mental health issues by calling for the inclusion of a broader range of theoretical lenses including institutional theory, cultural and spiritual perspective and critical sociology to understand more fully how employee mental health conditions may be undermined or improved.

Mental well-being is associated with positive outcomes throughout the life course. This study aims to examine interventions delivered by allied health professionals (AHPs) to alleviate community stressors adversely impacting public mental health and well-being.

Review inclusion criteria comprised experimental and qualitative process evaluations of public mental health interventions delivered by AHPs. Electronic searches in Cinahl, Embase, Medline, PsycINFO and the Cochrane Library, were combined with grey literature searches of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence public health guidance. A narrative synthesis and the Effective Public Health Practice Project appraisal tool were used to evaluate the evidence.

A total of 45-articles were included in the review describing AHP-delivered interventions addressing social disadvantage, trauma, bullying, loneliness, work-related stress, transitional stress, intersectionality, pain and bereavement. No articles were identified evaluating interventions delivered by operating department practitioners or orthoptists. A conceptual map was developed summarising the stressors, and a typology of public mental health interventions defined including: place-based interventions, discrete/one-off interventions, multi-component lifestyle and social connector interventions and interventions targeting groups at risk of mental health conditions.

Many mental health conditions begin in childhood, and a strength of the review is the life course perspective. A further strength is compiling a compendium of public mental health outcome measures used by AHPs to inform future research. The authors excluded many articles focussed on clinical interventions/populations, which did not meet review inclusion criteria. While playing a key role in delivering public mental health interventions, clinical psychologists are not defined as AHPs and were excluded from the review, and this may be construed a limitation. Given heterogeneity of study designs and interventions evaluated numerical analyses of pooled findings was not appropriate.

The review highlights the breadth of community stressors on which AHPs can intervene and contribute in public mental health contexts, stressors which correspond to those identified in UK Government guidance as currently important and relevant to address. The findings can inform developing community public mental health pathways that align with the UK National Health Service (NHS) Long Term Plan, on prevention and early intervention to protect community mental health and well-being. Further can inform the NHS strategic direction for AHPs including informing ways of increasing utilisation of core AHP skills to optimise contributions in public mental health agendas.

It is surprising there were not more AHP delivered evaluations of interventions for other stressors important to address in public mental health settings, for example gambling, domestic violence or that used digital technology, and these are areas for future research. Future research should identify the most active/effective dimensions of multi-component interventions which could be informed by frameworks to guide complex intervention development. The relative paucity of research identified, highlights the predominant focus of research to date on interventions for clinical mental health conditions and populations. The lack of preventative approaches is evident, and an important area for future research to align with UK health and social care priorities.

The review highlights AHP-delivered interventions impacting diverse community stressors across the life course. The findings can inform developing public mental health pathways aligned with government health service priorities to protect mental health and well-being, prioritise prevention and early intervention and increase utilisation of AHP skills across public mental health settings.

Over 2.7 million workers are employed in the UK construction industry and with the fragmented nature of the construction sector; cases of poor mental health of workers are on the increase. This upsurge in the number of workers experiencing poor mental health could directly impact construction safety with significant financial adverse consequences on employers and the UK economy. Studies have identified lapses within the construction sector emphasising the lack of transparency regarding reporting of mental health and well-being of construction workers due to the inadequate engagement from employers and the lack of genuine leadership commitment to tackle mental health.

This study adopted a non-probability purposive sampling strategy, using a self-selected sample. A self-administered questionnaire benchmarked against the mental health core and enhanced standards tools by the “Stevenson/Farmer review of mental health and employers” served as the basis for the methodology. A total of 106 industry managers from highways, construction, maritime, utilities, home building, rail and haulage/fleet were involved in this study.

The findings indicate that the industry is making good strides towards addressing mental health issues; poor mental health have significant financial burdens on businesses and the economy; some contractors have mental health initiatives and programmes in place; there is inconsistency of support available to employees; some contractors now integrate leadership training; the level of engagement vary based on the strategy and action plan adopted by organisations; different mechanisms are adopted for monitoring mental health issues, and there are cross-industry initiatives.

A limitation of this study is the number of participants which is not representative of the entire UK construction workforce. Therefore, the findings from this study as much as it presents some understanding of employee mental health and well-being cannot be overtly generalised across multiple industries, different geographic regions or contexts.

Employers should have a clear representation of the mental health of their employees to help them understand what affects worker’s mental well-being and how they can support them. Disregarding the multifaceted causes of mental ill-health due to the perceived financial implications could be more devastating for the industry.

Young construction project management practitioners (CPMPs) have unique, complex, and notable occupational mental health problems. However, there were few studies about the intervention for occupational mental health of CPMPs, and traditional intervention modes often failed to achieve significant effects. Therefore, this study aims to propose a new and effective intervention method.

Job crafting intervention was used to design an intervention experiment. A total of 72 CPMPs participated in a 10-week randomized controlled trial in China. Descriptive statistics and repeated measures analysis of variance were used to verify the effectiveness of job crafting intervention (JCI) on job crafting behaviors, job burnout, and work engagement with consideration of the impact of time.

Results showed that the intervention increased social resources, thus effectively reducing job burnout and promoting work engagement. Time also had a significant impact on cynicism, dedication, and social resources.

The authors should promote the habit of job crafting in CPMPs. Furthermore, in order to facilitate their job crafting, the authors should increase structural and social resources for them, and the authors can also encourage them to undertake challenging demands to increase their self-efficacy and the sense of achievement.

The authors bring into light a new psychological intervention approach among CPMPs, which integrates the advantages of the guidance in traditional organized intervention methods and the proactivity in individual spontaneous job crafting. The authors verify the efficacy of the JCI among CPMPs and help propose countermeasures and suggestions to improve the occupational mental health of CPMPs.

Current research on mental health in the construction industry is fragmented, making it difficult to obtain a complete picture of young construction workers’ mental health conditions. This situation adversely affects research progress, mental health-care planning and resource allocation. To address this challenge, the purpose of this paper was to identify the themes of mental health conditions among young construction workers and their prevalence by geographical location.

The scoping review was conducted using meta-aggregation, guided by the CoCoPop (condition [mental health], context [construction industry] and population [construction workers 35 years old and younger]) and PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews) frameworks.

A total of 327 studies were retrieved, and 14 studies published between 1993 and 2022 met the inclusion criteria. The authors identified 13 mental health conditions and categorized them under nine themes. Mood disorders, anxiety disorders and substance-related disorders constituted the most researched themes. Studies predominantly focused on young male workers in the Global North. The prevalence estimates reported in most of the studies were above the respective country’s prevalence.

This review extends previous studies by focusing specifically on the themes of mental health conditions and giving attention to young construction workers whose health needs remain a global priority. The study emphasizes the need to give research attention to lesser-studied aspects of mental health, such as positive mental health. The need to focus on female construction workers and on homogenous sub-groups of young workers is also emphasized. The findings can guide future systematic reviews on the identified thematic areas and help to plan the development of interventions.

Sensory modulation is an emerging approach that aims to reduce distress and agitation in mental health service users and potentially avoid the necessity for coercive practices such as seclusion and restraint. Despite the growing use of this intervention, there has been limited research exploring the implementation of sensory modulation at an organisational level, both internationally and within the New Zealand context. The purpose of this study is to investigate the implementation of a sensory modulation programme in two New Zealand inpatient mental health services using an exploratory organisational case study design.

Organisational case study design methodology was used to explore the implementation of a sensory modulation programme in two New Zealand acute adult inpatient mental health services. This study explored how key organisational and staff factors (including policies and practices related to de-escalation and seclusion reduction) influence sensory modulation implementation. Cases were described and examined the pattern of findings.

Strategies found to support implementation were identified at environmental, organisational, group and individual staff levels. Aspects highlighted as being particularly important included taking an inter-professional approach in leadership and training, rostering flexibility and leeway in staffing levels to support training attendance and responsiveness to crises.

The facilitators and strategies highlighted in this study may be used to support the design and implementation of future sensory modulation programmes in New Zealand and internationally.

The complexity of factors that influenced the implementation of the sensory modulation approach within an inpatient setting made determining the effectiveness of the approach challenging. However, the general principles and strategies identified in this study offer useful insights for the design and implementation of future sensory modulation programmes.

The purpose of this paper was to examine law enforcement officers' perspectives on job stress and barriers to supportive resources when working child sexual abuse cases in a large southern state. It is well documented in the literature that professionals who work in healthcare, emergency services and law enforcement face tremendous amounts of stress and consequences to their physical and mental health. Little research has been done to examine how child sexual abuse investigations impact law enforcement, and how these specialized officers perceive access to supportive resources.

This qualitative study was part of a larger quantitative study and included 20 law enforcement officers who participated in anonymous, semi-structured phone interviews.

Findings included (1) child sexual abuse cases are difficult, specialized and disturbing (2) barriers to supportive resources include law enforcement culture, the stigma of asking for help, awareness and accessibility of resources and leadership as gatekeeper to the resources and (3) officers perceive both formal and informal resources to be helpful and at best should be proactively available to all officers in the state. A model of the findings was developed to illustrate the implications for practitioners and scholars.

This study was not without weaknesses, specifically the small number of participants, volunteer sampling does not represent the general population and the sampling technique means some demographics may have been missed by researchers.

This study adds to the literature on law enforcement mental health, occupational health and mental health resources. It confirms established research in the literature and provides insight into officer perspectives about barriers that prevent access to informal and formal supports that could improve their emotional well-being.

This study is the first of its kind, to our knowledge, that asks detectives and investigators of child abuse cases about mental health resources. These law enforcement officers are at high-risk for traumatic stress, compassion fatigue and burnout due to the specialized cases they investigate.