Mental Health Promotion in the Workplace

Background

Common mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety, are prevalent in low- and middle-income countries (WHO World Mental Health Survey Consortium, 2004) and may result in disability and loss of economic productivity (Kawakami et al., 2012). Similar levels of depression have been reported in middle-income countries in Asia such as Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand (Mackinnon et al., 1998).

However, the promotion of workers’ mental health has been understudied in low- and middle-income countries. Nevertheless, there is a growing need to foster mental health at work, given that the productivity of companies/organizations and the whole society is affected by mental disorders in the workplace (Chopra, 2009).

Work stress increases among nurses in Vietnam and other South East Asian countries, due to rapidly increasing demands to medical care in the aging society. An Internet-based CBT (iCBT) program is known to successfully reduce depression, but a challenge exists in its low completion rate.

Aims

The aim of this research is to test the following hypothesis: The policy frameworks, interventions, and capacity-building programs that have demonstrated applicability and effectiveness in Japan and other high-income countries will, with suitable cultural adjustments, be reliable, valid, applicable, and effective in several selected low- and middle-income Asian countries, i.e., Nepal, Vietnam, and Myanmar.

Project plan

The objectives of the project were four-fold:

• to investigate effects of e-stress management programs among nurses in Vietnam that have been tested in Japan (effectiveness study) and

• comparative implementation between two types of e-stress management programs (implementation study) , in a randomized controlled trial (RCT);

• to investigates the implementation and related factors among hospital nurses in a more naturalistic setting after the RCT (implementation study);

• to know the process to disseminate the interventions to nurses in other hospitals in Vietnam (implementation study for scaling up).

Impact

This intervention, to address workplace stress in nurses, was scaled up across Vietnam and Thailand and work is ongoing to implement the strategy in Brunei and Indonesia.

Funding organisations

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