Mental health and safety behaviour in the oil and gas industry of Brunei Darussalam through a literature review and future research directions

Personal safety in the oil and gas industry is a well-established international research topic, but the specific intersection of mental health, safety behaviour, and the Brunei Darussalam context has not previously been synthesised. This review has examined peer-reviewed and grey-literature sources, and re-analysed a 2023 national industrial safety survey administered by the Industrial HSE Group of Brunei (iHSEg, n = 118). Two anonymised interviews with senior Bruneian HSE practitioners conducted in 2024 have also been re-analysed. The review found (i) broad definitional agreement on personal safety and safety behaviour in spite of ever-present non-convergence on antecedent–outcome pathways; (ii) consistent empirical evidence that impaired mental health degrades safety behaviour in oil and gas settings; (iii) a substantial moderating role of national-cultural dimensions, particularly power distance, in shaping safety culture; and (iv) an almost complete absence of Brunei-specific empirical work on personal safety and mental health in oil and gas applications, despite the industry’s national economic importance. The iHSEg survey indicated high self-reported HSE awareness (109 out of 118) but limited granularity on behavioural or mental-health indicators. Practitioner input tentatively placed Brunei’s oil and gas sector within the ‘calculative’ phase of the HSE culture ladder. This placement is offered as a testable hypothesis rather than as a conclusion. The review closes with a five-part research agenda for Brunei, spanning industry cross-sectional surveys with embedded mental-health screening, focus-group follow-ups, and recommendations for regional Southeast Asian comparative work. Not applicable.