Mental Health

There is a growing understanding across society about the importance of good mental health on overall health and wellbeing and the need to support people in developing good mental health habits in the same way we promote the
benefits of physical exercise and a balanced diet.

Our approach to supporting staff with good physical health will also support good mental health due to the link between positive mental health and having a physically healthy lifestyle.

However, there is more we can do to support staff to look after their own mental health (selfcare) and to increase support to improve and maintain mental health.

There has been a reduction across society in the stigma associated with discussing mental health more openly and for those who develop mental health problems. This has helped raise awareness about the importance of good mental health and early support and intervention when people are struggling.

We can do more to raise awareness and understanding through team based education of our staff and managers to encourage open discussion of developing and supporting positive mental health in the workplace.

We know that mental health related issues, including anxiety and depression, are the leading cause of poor health in our workforce and account for the majority of unplanned
absence from the workplace.

Preventing poor mental health by improving support available to staff is important. We will provide rapid and recovery focussed occupational health interventions including access to occupational psychological therapies.

Self Care for Mental Health

We currently provide a range of information, self-directed learning, and training to support staff to look after their mental health and to understand how they can help look after their colleagues.

This is available through a combination of information resources, e-learning and training courses including:

• Suicide prevention training
• Mentally Healthy Workplaces
• Guides to looking after your mental health, managing stress and anxiety, and improving mental health through physical exercise.

We will further develop our support for selfcare through a new suite of information resources and training courses including:

• Personal Resilience

  • Organisation-wide training and education on understanding what personal resilience is and what individuals and managers can do to improve and maintain it.

• Psychological First Aid

  • Developing staff skills in self-care, maintaining resilience, and positive coping.

• Mindfulness

  • Further promotion and awareness of the benefits of mindfulness practice, including links to self-directed learning and mindfulness apps.

• Coping with life events

  • We will develop information and resources to support staff through life events that impact on mental health including:
    • Menopause
    • Retirement
    • Bereavement
    • Becoming a carer
    • Becoming a working parent
    • Breakdowns in personal relationships

It is also important to sign-post staff to support services within our organisation and elsewhere. We will refresh our online health and wellbeing staff information and ensure it is easily accessible including through HR connect , which enables 24/7 access to information from both inside and outside of the organisation.

Support to Improve and Maintain Mental Health

The classroom based training courses we currently provide for suicide prevention and mentally healthy workplaces help raise awareness of mental health and promote the open discussion and dialogue needed to reduce stigma.

We want to increase accessibility to training and education sessions on mental health for staff and managers by delivering more sessions to teams in or close to their workplace.

Team-based training encourages staff to think about and discuss how they can put their learning into practice in their own workplace and team.

Team based training will be offered across the organisation to embed our approach to the following:

• Suicide prevention training

  • A critical component of early intervention and supporting colleagues who may be struggling and promoting a culture of openness where ‘It’s OK to not be OK’.

• Psychological First Aid and Resilience

  • How to develop and embed good mental health habits in the team and understanding team resilience. 

• Values Based Reflective Practice

  • Supports safe, facilitated conversations in teams of what staff are feeling, experiencing, and how to share this safely with each other.

• Caring Behaviours

  • Helping teams to understand how to deliver compassion and caring.

• Team debrief

  • ‘Checking out’ at the end of the working day.

• Conflict management

  • Helping teams understand and safely manage ‘high stakes’ and potentially stressful situations which occur frequently in healthcare settings.

• Critical Incident Stress Management

  • Structured debriefing and stress management method for teams who experience critical incidents in the workplace.

In addition to team based training and education, we will develop our support for individuals to improve and maintain positive mental health through developing and running:

• Facilitated sessions that promote relaxation and support resilience, including guided mindfulness and meditation.
• Personal development courses including personal resilience, emotional intelligence, and psychological first aid.

Occupational Health for Mental Health

We will provide an Occupational Health service which is able to provide healthcare for mental health related issues which:

• Focusses on early intervention and recovery.
• Supports staff to understand the difference between workplace related mental health issues and issues that may be related to their wider personal lives.
• Sign-posts to support services to help address non-workplace related issues, for example financial hardship (see below) or life events as outlined above.
• Provides advice and guidance to staff on where to access support for their health condition, including from within Occupational Health and through local health services.
• Provide advice and guidance to managers and staff on the support available to enable individuals to return to work, including managing ongoing mental health conditions.
• This will require development of the Occupational Health service to improve access to:
  • Psychological therapies including cognitive behavioural therapy.
  • Bereavement support.
  • Counselling.
  • Support for individuals with neuro-diversity in our workforce.

Health and Wellbeing Strategy