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An enormous amount of change has occurred in the last six years for the mental health system in England and the workforce within it. We have seen the 10‐year National Service Framework for Mental Health (Department of Health, 1999) gradually make its impact felt in the form, in particular, of new community mental health teams and structures for delivering care in the community. We have also, most recently, experienced the passing of the Mental Health Act 2007 (HM Government, 2007), after many turbulent years of controversy and argument, extending to nurses and non‐medical practitioners who have been given statutory powers to act as approved mental health practitioners and approved clinicians.Alongside these important developments has been a gradual revolution in traditional ways of working, in the form of the New Ways of Working initiative. This article considers the impact of New Ways of Working on mental health nursing ‐ the single largest professional group within the mental health workforce ‐ and the continuing implications for the profession. The development of nurse prescribing is used as an illustration of the challenges and opportunities that have commonly arisen when new roles and skill sets have been introduced in mental health settings.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss why mental health education in the workplace is vital. The paper aims to give HR managers and directors an understanding of mental health education and advice on how to imbed a culture of mental health well-being into the workplace.

The feature identifies the issues faced in the UK’s workplace with mental health issues, such as stress, anxiety and depression. The research identifies much desktop research, as well as authors 20+ plus years’ experience of work, in the field as a qualified psychotherapist. The paper also addresses latest research that suggests employees are happier to turn to technology rather than human contact to address their mental health concerns. The feature was drafted during the Covid-19 pandemic when mental health issues were recorded at an all-time high.

Mental Health has become a major issue within the workplace, and much work has taken place to rid stigma of mental health issues. It is essential that industry embed mental health education into their organisations to create healthy futures for all. Employees want their organisations to offer support, preferably in an online, always available, service.

Although there’s much discussion and awareness of mental health issues, mental health education is rarely understood.

This paper aims to outline the extent and cost of work‐related mental ill health and the challenges it causes in the workplace. It focuses on what employers can do to facilitate an early return to work for those absent from work. It argues for a proactive approach to the management of mental ill health in the workplace and highlights the important role of the line manager. Good practice from Europe is reported.

This paper reviews evidence from the HSE, EU_OSHA and IOSH.

Rather than only dealing reactively with cases of mental ill health in the workplace, it is more effective for an employer to adopt a proactive approach, recognising that employees are a valuable asset, assessing psychosocial risks and promoting health and wellbeing. This involves not only protecting their employees from work‐related health and safety risks, but also helping employees with minor conditions to stay at work, for example, by negotiating flexible hours. Employees also need opportunities to look after their own health and wellbeing at work. Finally, it is important to create a culture where working with a mental health condition is accepted by other employees as normal.

The paper highlights the importance of a proactive management approach to managing mental ill health.

Most research on the work conditions and family responsibilities associated with work-family conflict and other measures of mental health uses the individual employee as the unit of analysis. We argue that work conditions are both individual psychosocial assessments and objective characteristics of the proximal work environment, necessitating multilevel analyses of both individual- and team-level work conditions on mental health.

This study uses multilevel data on 748 high-tech professionals in 120 teams to investigate relationships between team- and individual-level job conditions, work-family conflict, and four mental health outcomes (job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, perceived stress, and psychological distress).

We find that work-to-family conflict is socially patterned across teams, as are job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion. Team-level job conditions predict team-level outcomes, while individuals’ perceptions of their job conditions are better predictors of individuals’ work-to-family conflict and mental health. Work-to-family conflict operates as a partial mediator between job demands and mental health outcomes.

Our findings suggest that organizational leaders concerned about presenteeism, sickness absences, and productivity would do well to focus on changing job conditions in ways that reduce job demands and work-to-family conflict in order to promote employees’ mental health.

We show that both work-to-family conflict and job conditions can be fruitfully framed as team characteristics, shared appraisals held in common by team members. This challenges the framing of work-to-family conflict as a “private trouble” and provides support for work-to-family conflict as a structural mismatch grounded in the social and temporal organization of work.

Although work has a fundamental role in the individual’s psychological well-being, the vast majority of mental health service users are not in employment. This is the result of various barriers that impede their work re-integration process despite their desire to work. Apart from the illness’ symptoms, these barriers are strongly associated with the negative effects of long-term unemployment, the negative stereotypes and attitudes towards mental health service users and the fear of losing disability benefits. There are several occupational intervention models aiming at vocational rehabilitation of mental health service users. Arguably, the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model of supported employment has proved to be more effective compared to other models. This chapter presents an innovative career counselling approach that combines elements from the IPS model and from the newly emerged career theories that have been developed to address today’s world of work challenges. This model was developed by the Pan-Hellenic Association for Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Work Integration (PEPSAEE) in Greece during the recent major economic crisis. Further implications of the model’s implementation regarding vocational rehabilitation of mental health users as means for social inclusion are discussed.

This study aims to explore how factors such as working conditions, lifestyle choices and demographic characteristics may affect the mental health of industrial workers in Kuwait.

Within the scope of the study’s objective, the authors reached 400 industrial workers (228 male, 172 female) working in oil and gas organizations in Kuwait. An ordered logistic regression model was conducted to examine the effect of relevant independent variables on workers’ mental health.

Result indicated that employees with a lower education level (p-value = 0.015), employees who were smokers (p-value = 0.004) and employees with night shifts (p-value = 0.019), were more likely to experience mental health issues. Furthermore, result strongly highlights a higher chance of experiencing mental health problems among the workers who had longer working times (p-value = 0.000). On the other hand, having children (p-value = 0.042), visiting a mental health professional (p = 0.014) and living in a house with others (flat mate, family members, etc.) (p-value = 0.016) were statistically significant factors to improve employees’ mental health. Surprisingly, the authors’ research did not find a significant relationship between the mental health issues experienced by employees and their yearly income.

The paper lies in its exploration of the impact of working conditions, lifestyle choices and demographic factors on mental health of industrial workers using statistical approach. By applying ordered logistic regression, this study uncovers new insights into mental health of industrial workers.

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.

Mental health conditions are common in the working population. Every organisation should have a comprehensive strategy that not only promotes mental health and provides effective return to work support but that proactively responds to mental ill health in the workplace at an early stage. This will bring about better health for people and save costs for organisations.This article outlines the scale of the issue and draws on leadership research to explore how this could be used in the workplace to build a culture able to respond to and manage mental health effectively at work. It outlines how the Centre for Mental Health (formerly the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health) has addressed some of these issues by working with the Australian charity, beyondblue: the national depression initiative. The Centre has made beyondblue's highly successful National Workplace Programme available in the UK in order to build management competencies so that managers have the skills, knowledge and confidence to act.

Building on the emerging literature on the psychology of working theory, this study aims to examine the impact of decent work on employees’ mental health as well as the association between the dimensions of decent work on employees’ mental health.

Quantitative data were collected from 260 employees working in the Ghanaian mining industry.

Data analysis showed a positive significant relationship between decent work and employee mental health. Furthermore, access to health care, adequate compensation and hours that allow for free time and rest related positively and significantly with employee mental health. However, the relationships between physical and interpersonal safe working conditions, organizational values that complement family and social values and employee mental health were not significant.

The findings extend the emerging literature relative to the influence of decent work on mental health in developing country context, specifically, sub-Saharan Africa where concerns for decent work have become extremely relevant because of the experience of extreme poverty and unemployment that characterize the region.

There is clear evidence that prison can be detrimental to mental health and that wider society has tended to assume “out of sight, out of mind” for prisoners in mental distress. The lack of access to effective mental health care in prisons along with increasingly lower numbers of prison officers, or Operational Officers (OOs), has created a negative culture that requires the development of specialist services. With this comes a need to conduct evaluations, and investigations, into the roles of OOs and mental health-care staff. This study aims to report on a commissioned evaluation around the introduction and development of an HMP Mental Health Unit, named the integrated support unit (ISU), in the North of England. This study’s section of the wider evaluation focuses on the early team building, working practice and development of mental health registered nurses, other care staff and OOs within the ISU.

Three focus groups incorporating two professional groups took place on the ISU. The first of six Mental Health Workers (MHW) including Registered Mental Health Nurses and support workers; the second of two sets of two ISU dedicated OOs. The areas addressed within each of the groups concerned why staff wanted to work in the ISU, as well as how they would measure its potential success, and the necessary skills competencies and training they thought were required to prepare them to work in the area.

Overall, the participants expressed an interest or enthusiasm for their work having actively chosen to work in the ISU. There was a strong sense of a wish for the unit to succeed; in fact, success was a motivating drive for all. Both OOs and MHW emphasised the importance of teamworking, autonomy and freedom as well as information sharing. Analysis also revealed many areas of practice that were challenging. The findings are optimistic for the development of such special units as evaluated here. The drivers for different professions along with their measures of success in the field are discussed in detail. The relationship, expectations, hopes and needs of both MHW and prison officers working in a multidisciplinary unit provide useful information to support both policy and practice in the field. The authors make recommendations around training regimes and how they can effectively coordinate the different symbiotic professional roles. The ISU is a new initiative in offender management within prisons and is reviewed as a model of mental health practice in prison settings.

The value in recruiting to the ISU dedicated OOs, with committed interests in mental health. A continued emphasis on the ongoing development of team working, focussing on issues of risk, trust and treatment. The development (by nurses) of a formal/mandatory period of training for new OO’s prior to taking up a role on the ISU. For mental health nurses to embrace team leadership/educator roles in the areas of mental health awareness, team building and conflict resolution. To capture and formulate and develop the specific range of mental health interventions offered within the ISU.

The presented research explores and evaluates the introduction of a new mental health wing (ISU) for 11 patients in a Northern UK prison. It does this through the consideration of group discussions with both MHW and OOs on this wing. This work is part of a larger study.