A Systematic Review of Mental Health Promotion in the Workplace

Mental health promotion in the workplace is recommended as a means of improving work efficiency and increasing job satisfaction as well as enhancing relationships at work. It is also expected to contribute to personal and professional development. This chapter includes reports from evaluation studies on workplace mental health promotion interventions. Seventy‐nine studies whose design included control condition are reviewed. The aims of this overview were to identify and document evidence‐based programs that promote mental health and prevent mental and behavioral disorders in the workplace. The analyses were conducted within the DataPrev project, sponsored by the European Commission. The most frequent aims of the workplace interventions were stress reduction or better coping with stress, mental health improvement, increased job satisfaction, improvement in job attitudes, and reduction in coworker conflicts, as well as job effectiveness improvement and reduction of absenteeism. Each of these aims was attained with the use of a variety of methods, such as skills training, improvement in occupational qualifications, working conditions improvement, relaxation and physical exercises. Only 14 studies were identified that predominantly focused on positive wellbeing outcomes, which shows a great need for research in this area. In this chapter the aims of mental health promotion and mental disorder prevention in the workplace as well as the means of their attainment (interventions) and implications of these interventions are described. It is also discussed how to encourage employers to introduce such programs in their organizations. Finally, conclusions regarding the current state and quality of knowledge on mental health promotion are presented and possibilities for the development of effective methods, based on results of empirical studies, are discussed.