Expanding the Worksite Wellness Foundation: An Introduction to Worksite Mental Health Promotion

Read about wellness today or talk to a wellness professional and you will very often read or hear about mind-body connection. Also, most models of wellness depict wellness as consisting of multiple domains or components.

These domains or components often include physical, mental or emotional, spiritual, intellectual, etc. When it comes to application of these domains or components at the worksite, through worksite wellness programming, most domains have been neglected, except for the domain of physical health.
Worksite wellness programs today are generally built on a foundation of workplace health promotion. Workplace health promotion has come to generally mean the promotion solely of physical health. Therefore, most worksite programming and interventions have focused completely on physical health issues.

The ironic fact is that significant employer expenses arise from both direct and indirect mental health and substance use issues. Direct expenses include the cost of psychopharmaceutical drug use and mental health treatment costs, especially for depression. Indirect expenses include presenteeism related expenses.

The recognition of these costs by employers, combined with the fact that we are making great strides, through research, in our understanding of the mind-body connection is creating an opportunity for worksite mental health promotion to emerge as an area of interest and an area that needs to be addressed by the worksite wellness community.

Begun in Europe, the concept of worksite mental health promotion is beginning to gain some traction in Canada and is emerging in the United States. This session is designed to introduce attendees to the big picture and concepts associated with worksite mental health promotion.

HR professiona;s, Benefit professionals, Safety professionals, wellness professionals, Work-Life professionals

At the conclusion of this program, attendees will be able to:

1. Define workplace mental health promotion
2. Describe the concepts and framework of workplace mental health promotion
3. Explain how they might incorporate workplace mental health promotion into their current worksite wellness program.

• Workplace Mental Health Promotion: A How-to-Guide – Click here
• Workplace Mental Health Promotion Bibliography - Click here
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) - Workplaces That Thrive: A Resource for Creating Mental Health-Friendly Work Environments by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration - Click here
• American Psychological Association, Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program - Click here

		William McPeck Viridian Institute for Applied Health Improvement View Profile