12 Crucial Employee Mental Health Articles

We regularly write articles on managing employee mental health, to assist those looking for help and tips on this topic. For this article, we bring together the 12 most popular articles for you to dive into and read what is of most interest to you.

We discuss how to develop a mentally healthy workplace by implementing effective support strategies. We also investigate how mental health affects our physical health and productivity. Finally, we look at psychosocial safety and how to develop a psychological safety climate.

There’s an article here for everyone, no matter where you are on the psychosocial safety journey!

Develop a Mentally Healthy Workplace

1. Our most-read article is 3 Steps Towards a Mentally Healthy Workplace which discusses the importance of encouraging employees to seek help as a first step. Your employees need to feel that they are in a safe environment so that if they reach out, they do not feel stigmatised. The second step is to provide training for your employees around mental health conditions and support those who seek help. Finally, ensuring sustainable best practice to support a mentally healthy workplace is a sound third step to managing employee mental health.
2. Another popular topic is Does Workplace Bullying Have Long Term Effects? This article looks at employees who were bullied. The bullying includes the spreading of rumours and repeated insults aimed at changing the image of the victim; resulting in feelings of guilt, shame and diminishing self-esteem. We offer primary, secondary and tertiary anti-bullying interventions that organisations can draw on to prevent workplace bullying, support victims and reduce the long-term effects.
3. Our article, 9 Mental Health Self-Care Strategies provides tips that every employee can use to improve their mental well-being. These include: laughing and crying, getting out and about, exercising, treating yourself and making small incremental achievements. 

Mental Health Symptoms Affect Us Physically

1. We discuss 11 Mental Health Symptoms That Affect Us Physically, and this article receives a wide readership and tens of thousands of views on social media. Research shows that declining mental health can even change your behaviour, for example, increased risk-taking and making poor choices. A chronic health condition can cause mental health decline manifesting itself into illness such as depression. All this can lead to decreased physical health and ultimately a shorter life. In this post, we present 11 symptoms that are the result of declining mental health.
2. Employers have a keen interest in our article, Employee Engagement, Burnout, Stress – Signs and Tips. This article presents research findings on stress, engagement, and burnout. Less than 25% of employees are highly engaged, and 39% are only moderately engaged in their work. Employee engagement globally dropped from 65% in 2015 to 63% in 2016. Seven out of 10 US employees report feeling disengaged at work. We provide strategies for employers to improve support for their staff and discuss the signs of stress with tips to reduce and respond to symptoms.
3. Some research developed by the University of Tasmania’s Work, Health and Wellbeing Network offers 3 Strategies To Better Manage Workplace Mental Health. The 3 strategies that businesses should try are: to undertake stigma reduction and mental health literacy programmes, ensure clear roles and implement flexible working practices.

Integrating Mental Health Strategies into the Workplace

1. Our article, How Can Work Impact Employee Mental Health? notes high job demands, low job control, high effort-reward imbalance, low relational justice, little procedural justice, role stress, bullying and low social support in the workplace are associated with a higher risk of developing common mental health problems. As employers managing employee mental health working arrangements are critical.
2. Many of our readers find our article, Workplace Sexual Harassment: Survey Key Findings to be useful given the high profile the topic has in the media. The #MeToo movement and the high-profile court cases against popular and well-known identities add to the focus. The Australian Human Rights Commission released a report on the 4th national survey on workplace sexual harassment in Australian workplaces on the 12th September 2018. We present some of the critical points. 
3. We provide nine ways for organisations aiming Towards An Integrated Approach to Workplace Mental Health. These are practical solutions for businesses managing employee mental health issues and adopting an integrated approach to workplace mental health. Businesses need to focus on the steps that they can take to break down the barriers to encourage their staff to seek help and support as well as address stigma.

Psychological Safety Climate

1. Do You Know Your Psychological Safety Climate Benchmark? Measuring the psychological safety climate in your business is critical to providing a mentally healthy workplace. With the cost of workplace mental health disorders and rising stress claims, governments around the world are focusing on ways to address this issue. The article describes how business can establish a psychological safety climate (PSC) benchmark and provides a range of low-risk and high-risk predictors that could be used to guide organisations in managing employee mental health.
2. Our article, Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work, summarises the Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work to guide what you can do to protect your workers and your business from the impacts of rising mental health risks in our workplaces.
3. Our article, Which Mental Health Theme Will You Use Next? looks at Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs), Mental Health First Aid training, Cognitive-based Therapy, e-Mental Health services, and MicroLearning to teach strategies and coping mechanisms. We summarise the benefits and outcomes that you can expect from each of these options to guide you in your next mental health theme.

TIS’s Mental Health Training increases mental health literacy about workplace stressors to teach effective coping strategies using animated storytelling. We have developed several out-of-the-box employee mental health modules. The training can be completed online, on tablets and mobile phones in under 5 minutes and draws on a MicroLearning methodology. Every training module offers suggestions on where employees can seek help.

If you would like to know more about our Mental Health Training, contact us today.